Work Text
Monday night at a quarter till seven, Hermione Granger struggled to pull out her wallet while her left hand hung limply at her side. The taxi slowed, jostling her in the back seat as it turned off the main road and onto uneven pavement, headlights piercing the darkness of the warehouse district.As far as Mondays went, her Ministry workload had been typical. She’d gone through the motions of filing petitions, answering correspondence, and reviewing the files for her big meeting. The publicity her Wednesday proposal would bring, the light it would shed on the underrepresented beings of the Magical World, was designed to give an extra push to next week’s vote.Tonight, she was pushing herself even farther. Not for votes. This was personal.As she shoved her hand into a bulky handbag slung over her shoulder, the sleeve of her coat bunched up at the elbow, revealing ugly black streaks along her forearm that ended at a gnarled, useless thing of a hand. The driver’s eyes suddenly shifted away from the mirror—he’d seen it.She instinctively pulled the sleeve over her damaged arm and continued to fish around in her bag as the cab pulled to a stop at the end of the freight dock. That was the problem with her cursed handicap, even in the Muggle world, she felt like she was constantly performing escape routines. Every successful move earned her points for her wits and one-handed dexterity. Each failure caused her to rely on the generosity of strangers, taking another hit to her pride.The driver’s eyes flickered back to the mirror and away again, as if to ask what the hell was taking her so long. Welcome to the show, she thought. Tonight’s performance: getting out of a Muggle cab.Her therapist had described these late-night clients as “shy” and “marginalized by the Ministry”, two things that Hermione loved to fix. Through Dr. Metzker, she’d accepted the side job at the Freedom Wings Agency for the Underrepresented, thinking that it’d compliment her Ministry position. She would be able to reach so many more people who needed her help.“I told them how good you are at what you do,” Dr. Metzker had said.Yes, Hermione was very good at what she did. She’d drafted the legislation that required fair pay for house-elves. Even after her magic faded and her wand hand became a useless appendage, her proposal on equal employment opportunities for werewolves was the current topic on the Wizengamot floor.Sheer will kept the year-long struggle to regain her magic a secret from the public. Now that she’d stopped fighting the inevitable, she only had to accept her condition and move on. Only her closest friends, her boss, and the assistant he hired to cover for her knew the magic had abandoned her for good.It didn’t stop her from fighting. Far from it. Now, she had an even greater reason to petition for the people who needed to be seen for their worth, not their inconveniences.The taxi’s engine revved, causing her wallet to slip under a bag of crisps in her bag.“Come on, come on, come on,” she muttered under her breath. “You can do this!” Finally, she caught the wallet in her fist and flipped it open. She glanced up at the dashboard where the running cab fare flashed on the digital meter. She didn’t have enough cash to cover it, but that’s what cards were for.And now for my next trick…She leaned forward with the purse in her lap and swore again when the charge card slipped out of her fingers and fell between the seat and the floor. Her body strained against the seatbelt as she tried to reach it. Instinctively, she whispered, “Accio card”.Nothing happened. She kept forgetting… she kept trying... as if her brain refused to fully process the finality of her loss.Are you feeling overwhelmed today, Ms. Granger? Often, big adjustments take longer than you want them to.Thank you for the validation, Dr. Metzker, but I need to get out of this cab tonight.Right. Focus. Her body wasn’t broken—it was different. Reaching and grunting, she finally grasped the edge of the card with the tips of her fingers and lifted it triumphantly into the air.“Here it is!” she said in an exaggerated, chirpy tone while handing it over to the driver, who sighed heavily and swiped it with all the patience of a whistling kettle. The machine chirped back, and Hermione retrieved her card, stuffed it into the open bag—not back in her wallet because that would take too long—and began the next task: exiting the vehicle.The door latch popped open on the first try, and she squeezed her purse to her left side with her bad arm so it wouldn’t fall back into the car while she climbed out of the backseat, claiming her minor victory.The taxi driver grumbled, “You could have asked for help instead of wasting my time.”I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…Ms. Granger, I have to be frank with you. If we are going to continue working together, you have to stop apologizing for who you are.Right, Dr. Metzker. You are so right about that.Hermione pushed her self-deprecating thoughts aside and replaced them with practical observations. Logically, the taxi driver earned his wages by the minute, so what did it matter if he waited a few ticks longer for his fare?Merlin, that sounded pathetic, like she was giving excuses for herself. She hated making other people feel like they had to make time for her. But over the past year, Hermione had dropped a long string of magical therapists who had all said the same thing.Graciously accept the help offered, be grateful for the little things… It all sounded genuine and honorable, but after all the speeches of ‘digging deep’ and ‘facing reality’, Hermione was left with the hollow realization that she had become nothing more than a burden to everyone around her.Dr. Metzker had been different, demanding in their first session that Hermione fight for her autonomy, no matter what it took. The world didn’t owe her anything, of course. But she shouldn’t have to surrender her dignity for the privilege of existing, either.Her large bag slipped clumsily and plummeted, along with her self-worth, onto the pavement. Hermione huffed and straightened her entirely impractical Muggle business outfit in the red glow of the taxi’s tail lights, hoisting the bag to her aching shoulder. Logically, it would have been safer to bring someone with her to the vacant warehouse, or side-along Apparate with a trusted friend instead of calling a cab. But part of this exercise, Dr. Metzker had explained, was proving to herself that she could lead an independent life.She got out of the taxi on her own—that ought to count for something.The large brick factory building from London’s industrial past looked like it owned the whole dock. It was aAn imposing three story structure, andit was the closest to the water, while all the other buildings seemed to crowd around it like smaller, neglected children. Around the corner, she found a sliding metal door with bits of olive paint clinging to the frame. A plaque below the peephole read, “Warehouse #3”.The night was quiet enough to hear water lapping against docks, mere feet away from where she stood. Nothing moved except for the hair prickling away from her neck.Nerves. Hermione replaced her unease with the practiced greeting she would use for her clients. Dr. Metzker insisted she had to stop thinking of herself as the only one trapped between two worlds. Whoever these people were, they would get her full attention. Nothing perturbed Hermione Granger more than being forced to view one’s differences as a weakness.She knocked on the warehouse door resolutely. “Hello? Is anyone in there?”The metal door slid aside, revealing a narrow opening into blackness. Hermione stepped inside the cool space, wishing that she could light her wand… no, scratch that. As she made a mental note to add a small torch to her bag, her attention shifted to a small pool of light where a stubborn streetlamp had banished the darkness through the broken skylight.A lithe, feminine figure stepped out of the shadows holding a candle. Her face hovered behind long tresses that flowed past her shoulders. A feeling of vague recognition crossed Hermione’s mind, but she couldn’t place where she’d seen the woman.The flash of familiarity vanished.No, she’d never met this woman before.“I’m sorry I’m late,” Hermione said in her most professional tone. “The cabs don’t seem to want to come this way. I had to call three before I could get a ride…” She trailed off as the woman in front of her continued to give her a measured, unblinking stare.“You’re just in time,” the thin woman said, her husky voice matching the surrounding shadows.Relieved that she was indeed in the right location, Hermione nodded. “My name...”“We know who you are. They tell me you are the expert at making room within the Ministry for people who don’t belong.”“Well, I wouldn’t put it like…” Hermione again found herself unable to finish speaking under the woman’s unyielding gaze.“Come closer,” the woman said, marking a path with the sweep of her hand.Hermione ventured further into the warehouse, fully aware of the ominous shadows around her. Three, maybe four shapes moved to her left, and another cluster of indistinguishable forms wavered on her right. She did not know how far the room spread out beyond her view, or how many others hid from her sight.She assumed an authoritative posture and addressed the unknown assembly. “Everyone deserves a chance for equal representation,” she began. That was her platform, and she was going to stand by it. “If I knew who you were, I would have prepared better documentation for you.”“If you knew who we were,” the woman said carefully, “you wouldn’t have come.” She smiled, and Hermione saw a flash of pointed white teeth.Fangs.She shouldn’t stare, but the mesmerizing glare from the woman’s dark eyes rooted Hermione to the floor. Her mind raced, trying to fit the pieces together. Vampires had no protections under Wizarding law. They weren’t even classified as ‘human’. If this woman was seeking representation within the Ministry of Magic, Hermione would have a tough fight on her hands.She flinched as a loud ‘clang’ echoed through the space. Someone had closed the warehouse door. The surrounding emptiness seemed to move, crowding around her. Certain that someone was right behind her, Hermione spun around and met only darkness. She jerked her arm away from something that brushed her side, and suddenly she couldn’t move at all. Invisible hands grabbed at her hair… wrapped around her arms… ran down her legs.“Wait!” she cried out. “Let me go!”A sharp sting on the back of her neck threw her off balance, and her tight Muggle skirt did nothing to keep her from toppling to the ground. Hermione yelped as something pierced the skin on her arms, legs… everywhere.“No! What are you…” Her throat constricted, and then released a strangled scream as they swarmed around her. “This is a mistake… I was sent to help you! Why…”“Oh, but you are helping,” came the silken voice from somewhere above her. “You are exactly what we need.”Even in her compromising position, Hermione’s brain backtracked through the events that had led her to this place, to these monsters. She’d accepted the assignment, stupidly complying with their request to come alone. Blindly believing that she would be fine without backup.Cold crept into her, along with the terrible realization that no one knew where she was. Paralyzed, she could only stare at the broken skylight and hope that someone, somewhere could hear her screams.Please, someone. Anyone…Hermione’s eyes pinched together as pain flooded her system, and her mind reeled. Her mouth was open. She was exhaling, but she no longer heard her own voice. Another sharp stab of pain forced her eyelids to fly open, and she was met with the face of the woman who had lured her in.“We cannot do anything for the pain,” the thin woman said calmly above Hermione’s prone form on the floor, “but do not worry. Tomorrow, you won’t remember a thing.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
How are you feeling today, Ms. Granger?I don’t know, Dr. Metzker. Is that more important than getting my life back?Hermione’s head pounded with the force of fifty gavels. A terrible whine filled her ears. Black dots danced behind her eyelids. Everything hurt all at once. Slowly, she opened her eyes to a blurred pool of light just out of her reach. Cold. She was cold, and damp. Long minutes passed before she realized the chill spreading through her body came from the concrete pressed against her cheek.Why was she on the floor?She pressed her unsteady hands into the roughness of the brick wall and pushed herself up to her feet. The pool of light from the broken skylight cast a halo around a cluster of small objects on the floor. Hermione paused, hovering her hand over the small switch on the wall.Somewhere above her, a bird ruffled its feathers.She moved her fingers over the panel and the lights came on, hot and glaring. The warehouse was empty, except for her heels strewn several feet away from her purse, with its contents scattered carelessly off to the side. Compact. Wallet. Sunglasses. Muggle change. Ministry coin.“Hello?” Her voice jumped through the vast space and bounced against something far away. A rat ran straight for her feet. She side-stepped and watched it scurry through a half-open sliding door. Beyond it, a street light flickered against a dark sky, and water lapped gently against the quiet docks.As soon as she took a few steps towards her belongings, a high-pitched twang screamed through the air. Hermione froze, noticing the small flashing panel on the opposite wall. Wailing sirens jolted her into a flurry of gathering everything back into her purse. As a car door slammed outside, she grabbed her shoes and pushed against the sliding door. It groaned as she slipped into the night.Hermione pressed her back against the bricks and listened to radio chatter echo from the opposite side of the building.“Tripped alarm. Yeah, but no one’s here. No, it didn’t look like a forced entry. Doors weren’t locked… Nah, I’m sure. Gotta be a stray animal or a squatter. The alarm probably scared ‘em off.”For a split second, she considered approaching the voice. It had to be a security guard or police officer, but her body froze as she thought through her next move. Muggle police were a lot like Magical Law Enforcement. They’d ask questions and demand to know her business.What would she tell them?There was supposed to be a meeting…Lights appeared as the police car made its rounds through the warehouse district. Hermione hid behind a dumpster, surrounded by the smell of rotting fish and piss until the marked car rolled out of sight. Under the flickering streetlight, she dug around in her bag for the charmed Ministry coin Ron had begged her to keep on her for emergencies. Her hand brushed against the coin, finding a small rectangle piece of cardstock. Hermione pulled the coin and the business card out of her purse.The Freedom Wings Agency card shimmered with its foil embossed wings under the streetlight. Flipping it over, Hermione’s lips soundlessly moved, spelling out the warehouse address and the time of the meeting. Eight o’clock. Her watch sported a fresh crack in the face, and she squinted to make sure she was reading the time correctly. The meeting was supposed to have been half an hour ago.Obviously, something had gone terribly wrong, or she wouldn’t have ended up blacked out on the floor. Her body ached all over, and if she had had her wand, or a spark of magic, she would have cast a healing charm and at least been able to scry for a clue about anything beyond getting out of the cab and knocking on the warehouse door.She’d been on the floor…Her clothes were torn…It would be so easy to press her thumb into the Ministry seal and rub three times. Ron’s team would be there in seconds. They’d ask her what happened, and when she told them she didn’t remember, they’d investigate…… the anonymous clients she was supposed to meet…Had they been hurt? Should she report them?But then, she had no clue who they were or if they’d even been there.Okay, okay… she’d survived a year on the run. She could do this.Step one: don’t panic.Step two: get out of harm’s way as fast as she could.Step three: worry about the rest after she was somewhere safe.Hermione rounded the corner, coming to the first street off the docks. Relief spread through her when she saw no police cars in sight.During the worst of the insidious takeover of the Ministry of Magic, Hermione and her friends had hidden from Death Eaters in the wilderness for months. Their lives had been on the line. She worked for the new Ministry, now. No one was after her, for Merlin’s sake. Getting back to her flat should be as simple as putting on her shoes and walking in the right direction.On the first step, Hermione pitched forward as pain shot through her ankle and up her leg. Catching herself against the locked gates of a seafood market entrance, she kicked the heel of her shoe free from whatever it had caught on, and then winced as the heel snapped clean off.Never mind the shoes, then. Hermione packed her heels in her bag and kept walking, each step spotlighted by the blinking red letters spelling out ‘C-L-O-S-E-D’.Low, sultry music and the smell of acrid wolfsbane wafted out of a dark space between buildings out to the street. If she had tucked her wand inside her bag, the people inside would at least have recognized her status and likely left her alone. Barefoot and injured, she tried to hide her limp as well as she could. To the residents of London's underbelly, nothing was more irresistible than a helpless thing, lost in the dark.“Aw, hon. Bad date?” a throaty voice called from the alley across the street. Hermione hunched her shoulders and quickened her stride, ignoring her throbbing ankle.Not injured. Not lost. Keep moving.People kept telling her how lucky she was to be alive. And she was. She could hide her scars from view, unlike some she knew. Last time she visited Lavender in the long-term werewolf recovery facility, her friend was still sporting angry streaks of scar tissue all over her body with no hope of ever walking again. It was disturbing how nonchalantly her friend had confided in her that ‘not waking up one day wouldn’t be a bad thing’.Everyone had war wounds, she reminded herself. Some were internal, like Ron’s. Losing his brother had beaten him down, but he soldiered on - for her - for his family. Loss had made him clingy and sentimental, and sometimes over-the-top suffocating. Occasionally, she’d think about her old classmates and how she hadn’t owled them in a while, and then she’d remember how many of them were gone, too.“I’ve got something to take the edge off,” the voice called. “You look like you need it.”She needed something, but the anonymous offer wasn’t likely going to include making a cab magically appear to take her back to her flat.The voice followed her across the next block, this time coming from the alley up ahead. “You won’t get any Johns looking like that.”Hermione’s ankle throbbed as her steps came to a halt. “What exactly are you accusing me of?” she called into the night.A woman stepped out of the darkness, partially lit by a florist’s window. Her flowing maroon dress brushed against her ankles, held up by two strips of fabric tied behind her neck that barely grazed her breasts. She looked put out by Hermione’s very presence, as if the entire street belonged to her alone.“Good thing too,” the woman continued, “because you won’t like what’s coming to you if you swipe one of my kerb crawlers.”“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Hermione must look like a vulnerable, wounded mess of a Muggle, but on the inside, she seethed. She'd been a hero once. A powerful witch. She would not let some street woman accuse her of soliciting when she clearly intended to be anywhere but here.Suddenly, a firm hand grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. Instinct took over, and Hermione swung her extra large pocketbook in an arc, aimed at the woman’s head.Her bag missed as the woman deftly sidestepped and lunged forward. Before Hermione could react, a hand grabbed her chin, holding her in place. The stench of stale ale fanned over her face. “You fresh little crumpet, trying to serve on my street. I won’t let you… Oh!”The woman’s indignation evaporated. Her hand dropped from Hermione’s chin. “They’ve gotten to you,” she said. “Please, please don’t tell them I’m here.”“Who?” Hermione asked, her mind reeling.The woman backed into the glass, her backless dress smearing the window, obscuring a vase of lilies. “I’ll do anything, whatever you want. Here.” She pulled a wad of bills out from somewhere Hermione didn’t want to guess and stuffed them into the large shoulder bag, patting it gently. “Notes make it better, don’t they?”“Money doesn't fix everything,” Hermione shot back, rubbing at her useless arm.The barely dressed woman cowered, eyes darting to look down the street and back at Hermione. They stared at each other for a long moment, as if the woman expected another demand.A million questions filled Hermione's head, tempered by the slim chance that this woman might know something about the warehouses down the street. The woman's flighty posture suggested that she would rather run than willingly take part in an impromptu interrogation. Hermione let the moment linger, and finally, broke the silence with a question the woman was most likely to know.“Do you know where I can get a cab?”The woman pointed with a shaky hand down the street in the direction Hermione had been walking. Vine tattoos snaked from her wrist to her shoulder. “Two more blocks south, and you’ll get to the main road. Please, I wasn’t here.”Hermione counted the blocks down the row of lamplights and figured it would take another minute before she reached the main street. When she turned back to the florist's window, the woman had disappeared. She couldn’t fathom what had the woman so spooked that she’d give a wad of cash to a stranger. But there was nothing to be done about it except hope that the cab would show up where the woman had pointed. She began walking again, this time not bothering to hide the limp.Another glass-front, this one filled with wheels, gears and chains, came up on her left. She caught her reflection in the light and almost tripped over herself. Hair awry, blouse torn… her pencil skirt sported a nasty side seam rip that, if she moved the wrong way, exposed her underthings.Bucking hippogriffs, no wonder that woman acted strangely. She quickly adjusted her roughed up coat, pulling her sleeve down to the wrist. Then she tucked her gnarled hand into the pocket.Well, that was better, but her reflection still made it look like the aftermath of her recurring nightmare, where a thick bolt of orange light had slammed her into the crumbling castle wall. It was the point fixed in her mind, where everything had started to change.Hermione gripped the Ministry coin in her fist, wondering again if she should just take the easy way out.At first, she thought she'd escaped the war with only a bruised shoulder. She went back to the renovated castle for her final year at Hogwarts, and afterwards, found a position at the Ministry in Magical Law.But a year into her career, things started to slide downhill. It started with a splinching while apparating home from the engagement party. The Mediwitch blamed it on the champagne and reattached the tip of her index finger with no complications. Then her dictation quill began omitting dates and times from her correspondence, causing her to miss important meetings with her boss. Wards in her flat suddenly deactivated. Doors and windows flew open in the middle of the night.Initially, the Healers wrote her symptoms off as a fluke. No one admitted that anything was wrong until the veins in her arm darkened and she lost control of her fingers. One day, she woke up to a gnarled mass of blackened, useless digits attached to her wrist and couldn’t even cast a warming charm to heat her kettle.Her magic was gone.Ron sent her back and forth between Healers at every opportunity, saying, “Maybe this time they’ll find something…” Lengthy and expensive consultations with the CurseBreakers had yielded only frustration and too much time off from work. After months and months of experimental reverse-hexes and useless potions, he didn’t understand when she told him she wasn’t going back for more treatments. He couldn’t fathom her accepting that she was no longer capable of casting spells. And he sure as hell had a hard time believing that she wanted to live alone in a Muggle flat and come to terms with her new reality.Wizards still wore glasses. No one could reverse the Killing Curse. Werewolves would always change with the moon.Even magic had its limitations.Two years after helping win the war that saved the Wizarding World, Hermione Granger had lost the one thing that made her a part of it. She moved out of the magical district and agreed to give Ron her spare key because, by god, all he wanted to do was support her. But he had to stop helping her pretend she was someone she couldn’t be anymore. That was six weeks ago. Little by little, Hermione finally felt a hint of that sense of autonomy her therapist had been talking about.She’d been through the hell of war. She’d been hunted and tortured and fought for her life. She was strong and capable, and magic hadn’t been the only weapon she’d wielded to stay alive.So, no. She did not want her ex-fiance to come running and rescue her the first time she stumbled and fell on her own.Hermione shoved the Ministry coin back into her bag. Her haggard reflection stared back at her in the glass. She wished she had something to tie the bushy strands away from her face... her face… the hand wrenched out of her hair and patted at her sallow cheeks… what had happened to her face?Parchment-pale skin clung to her cheekbones, and dark veins ran down her neck. Was the curse spreading throughout her body from her arm?A screeching sound echoed through the alley, accompanied by rubbish bins crashing together.Safety first. Panic later.Hermione hurried down the two blocks and took a left at the next street.The woman had been true to her word. There on the corner was a man getting out of a cab. Hermione ducked her head and slipped into the back of the taxi while the door was still open, a bonus, because she didn’t have to reveal her gimp hand. The man gave a start at her unexpected appearance in his recently vacated seat, then straightened his tweed coat and closed the door for her. Another bonus, since she didn’t have to ask.“Where to?’ the cabbie asked, pulling away from the curb.“Albert Square,” Hermione automatically quipped. It was a ten-block deviance from her flat, a habit leftover from the year that she’d learned to leave no trace of where she’d been. Back then, it was easier to trust no one, because most times, it had kept her alive.She leaned her head against the glass, watching the streetlights pass as the cab whisked her back to bustling midtown London.When she first moved into her new flat, Hermione’s new neighbors, Margaret and Benny, had invited her over for coffee straight away, and checked in with her on the weekly. Around them, she felt like she could accept her new normal. It was nice, spending time with people who had no clue that magic was missing from her life.But as much as they had bonded, she couldn't pop downstairs to Margaret and Benny’s place after a night like this and hash out her problems over wine coolers and crisps. No, she’d have to save her complicated problems for Dr. Metzker, who listened with the patience of a sloth and demanded answers to uncomfortable questions about her mental state.She was also the person who had gotten her into this mess.Hermione caught the reflection of a dark stain by her collar in the rearview mirror of the cab. Out of curiosity, she leaned forward, trying to get a better look.The cab stopped, jerking her forward.“This is it,” the cabbie said, and turned around for the first time. His sudden slack expression confirmed that maybe the rear-view mirror was trying to tell her something. “Are you sure you don’t want me to take you to the Hospital? There's no charge.”“No, just wait here while I…”She reached into her bag, finally grateful for the large purse that held everything her therapist said she would need to get by as a Muggle. She got out her compact and shifted forward in the back seat to get a good angle in the rear-view mirror of the cab. Then she powdered over the dark lines on her face. Even Dr. Metzker agreed she should avoid getting admitted to St. Mungo's again. They couldn’t help her the first, second or third time they had admitted her.“It’s a skin condition,” she told the cabbie's worried expression, putting on a second layer of powder around her jaw line where the veins seemed to be the darkest. “Very rare. No need to worry.”But she had every reason to be worried. If anyone in the wizarding world recognized her in such a questionable state, they’d lock her in a sterile room, run tests that revealed nothing - subject her to experimental treatments that didn’t work.She winced as she powdered down her neck, covering cuts and raw skin. A nasty bruise on her cheek got a double layer of powder, making her look less like a ghoul. She met the cabbie's gaze through the mirror.“You don’t have to stare.”He dropped his eyes. “S’not natural.”“Hey,” she called sharply, causing him to look back. “Obliviate,” she whispered.The cabbie stared back at her like she was crazy. She probably looked it, babbling nonsense charms that had no effect in front of Muggles.“Never mind. Forget I was ever here.” She reached into her bag and dumped the fistful of street cash into the front seat of the cab.“Yeah,” he said, keeping his eyes on the money. “Never saw a thing.” Hermione shoved the door open, got herself out of the cab, and slammed it shut with her hip.Ten blocks. Broken heels. Twisted ankle.Apparition would be useful, or an invisibility cloak, or a time turner. (If she was fantasizing, she might as well go big, yeah?)Hermione started limping home. All she wanted was to sink into her oversized couch. Phone Dr. Metzker and demand to know what kind of client would abandon her on the floor of a darkened warehouse. Try to jog her memory about what had happened and why. Maybe pour herself a drink and crawl under her covers until she had to face another morning.When she finally reached the steps to her flat, she took a long breath, and went through the exercises her therapist had drilled into her. Taking stock of her emotions, Hermione labeled and filed them away to clear her mind: there was a little guilt (always in the background, still unable to shake), some queasiness (probably from the fall, she’d have to check herself more thoroughly once she was inside and cleaned up), and then, as she looked up to her third-floor window, a sudden, undeniable sense of unease.She had definitely not left a light on inside her empty flat.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Hermione!” Ron leapt off a stool and abandoned a cup of tea and a copy of The Daily Prophet on her kitchen island, running up to her before she could take three steps into her flat."Oh my god, Ronald!" she breathed with sudden relief, followed by supreme irritation as he held her by her shoulders and scrutinized her from every angle. After the night she'd had, If Hermione had any expectations about who was in her flat when she opened her door, her ex-fiance had been low on her list of people she wanted to deal with.His haggard face morphed into relief as she struggled out of his grasp. “Everyone’s been so worried. Your clothes… what happened?”“I twisted my ankle on the way home. I just need a minute to change.” Hermione shrugged out of his grasp and slipped past him into her bedroom and closed the door firmly behind her. She tore off her ruined work clothes and spun around in a circle, trying to find something to put on that would make her feel more in control… or at least something that would help her convince Ron that she hadn’t lost her mind.A pair of baggy sweatpants and an oversized jumper from the night before lay on her bed. Hermione threw on her lounging-on-the-sofa outfit and finger-combed her hair, trying to make herself more presentable in the mirror.It’s Ron, she thought. He’s worried about me, that’s all this is. She would not lose all the progress she’d made towards her independence after one terrible night. Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t tell him about the warehouse. The Ministry, and specifically, Ministry Aurors couldn’t know. Not yet. Hell, she was there, and she had no clue what had happened either.Passing the mirror, she adjusted the jumper’s high neckline and made sure the makeup still masked her darkened veins. She didn’t need him to freak out over her appearance and make rash decisions about her well-being. That was her job. Later, after she convinced him to leave for the night.His muffled voice came through the door, strained and pleading. “Hermione, are you sure you’re alright?”She opened the bedroom door, met by deep concern. The thought of confronting him with the fact that he shouldn’t still be using the spare key to her flat got filed away with ‘other things to take care of later’, and she brushed past him into the living area. Hermione ignored his discarded Ministry robe on her couch, setting herself to straightening up her already tidy flat.Ron followed her around the island, waving a crumpled note. “Your boss said to give this to you, since you never showed up for work.”A sudden pressure built behind her eyes. “I was working!” she retorted. The full day at the office with the pile of parchment work her assistant called ‘Monday problems’, the non-meeting, her disheveled condition, and the long walk home added their own pins and needles to her skull. It was too late for coffee, but she plugged in the electric kettle and flipped it on out of spite.“With that sketchy agency, and for knuts on the Galleon, from what I’ve heard,” Ron said in a way that meant he didn’t approve.Ron swore up and down that he would respect her personal space, giving her time to sort out what she was capable of. But no sooner had she believed everything to be settled, than he’d pull another ‘I’m worried about you’ card from his deck of ‘Let’s Save Hermione Granger’ cards. Tired of all the games, she watched him unplug the kettle and cast a heating charm on it. Then he had the nerve to take the tin of decaf Chai tea out of the cupboard.He set the tin on the counter and faced her, a pound of seriousness pressing into his features. “I trust you with my life, you know that, but there’s been disturbing activity in Muggle London. People have gone missing. The entire Auror department is on alert.”Hermione’s hand hovered over her mug. “When did Ministry personnel take an interest in London’s non-wizarding issues?”“We got reports… complaints, actually. Muggle friends and family are being attacked. Some have gone missing. We’re all getting briefed on the details tomorrow morning, but the talk is that an unknown non-Muggle entity is targeting Muggles connected to Ministry personnel. I heard that some are suggesting a lockdown on the Statute of Secrecy. That maybe wizards need to take a step back… to protect themselves and their families.”“Isn’t that overdoing it? We just fought a war started by intolerance. How can they think that isolation is the answer to everything?” Hermione envisioned all of her equality work going up in a cloud of panic and overreaction. Two years ago, Squibs and Muggle-borns wore targets on their backs for simply existing. She had been one of those targets. Everyone should have learned by now that hiding their heads in the sand from each other's differences never worked in anyone’s favor.“That’s just the panic talk around the cooler. The Minister is saying we should look into it. Try to figure out what’s going on. They’re Muggles, Hermione. They’ve got nothing to protect themselves against the unknown. When you didn’t show…” He stepped into her space, reaching for the tin.She bumped him aside with her hip and braced the tin between the counter and her torso so she could pop it open with one hand. “I’m supposed to be regaining my independence. You promised you would support me in that.”He ran a hand through his hair and let her struggle with the mesh strainer. “Yeah, but it’s bloody hard supporting you when nobody knows where you are.”That was the point, Hermione thought fiercely as she left the tea on the counter to steep. She dumped the broken shoes out of her purse and forced her hand to resist tracing a tidying spell in the air. Across the room, she could sense Ron clench his jaw and remain silent as she purposefully picked up the shoes and set them neatly by the door. It had taken a long string of unhelpful therapists before Hermione accepted that she’d have to live without her magic. Ron was still working through the fact that she wanted to live without his magic, too.“They’re targeting Muggles, you said. No one except your family and my boss knows about my lost magic. I’m not a target.”Ron opened his mouth, ready to argue, but he snapped it shut and stayed silent. Neither of them had put a name to what she was now. She’d been a Muggle-born with magic. Now what was she? Just a Muggle? A Squib? Did they even have a name for someone who used to be magical?“At least I can sleep tonight knowing you're safe.”Hermione didn’t know whether to be grateful or irritated at his concern. Wanting to show that he was the one who understood and loved her through all her changes, Ron had relented to her terms of being on her own - most of them. Being supportive and being suffocating were two different things, and in all the time she’d known him, Ron hadn’t learned the difference.“If we were married…” he started.Hermione cut him off. “We’re not. We’re not even dating.” She followed with that last bit to keep Ron from falling back on the “we could be” scenario.She didn’t mean to be hurtful, but trying to reestablish her independence daily, with every little thing, was exhausting. So many of his words were peppered with an overextended invitation to intrude on her life. It was why, after being released from the hospital, she turned down Ron’s suggestion to move in with him.“Look,” he said, “all I wanted was to know where you were, alright? You didn’t answer my owl yesterday, and today you didn’t show up at the Ministry. It’d be easier if you didn’t disappear for a whole day.”He went over to the couch and collapsed into it, throwing a worn hand over his face. Hermione had grown accustomed to seeing him overwhelmed, overworked, and still willing to do whatever it took to keep her in one piece. Though the endearing qualities had worn off ages ago, part of what he did was still admirable. The rest of it was infuriating.She revisited her tea and dumped the strainer into the bin. “You said ‘a whole day’. What do you mean I was never at the Ministry? When did you send the owl?”Ron mumbled something into his arm, which sounded like he’d sent several messages throughout the day. That couldn’t be right. She should have gotten those owls at her office. Even though she’d thrown their personal relationship into the rubbish bin, she still considered him her closest friend. They’d been together for so long, and he knew her better than anyone. She would have answered his messages straight away, if only to prevent… she looked back at her ex-fiance, sunk into the couch cushions like he belonged there… this.She'd even agreed to go to dinner with him tomorrow night. Because he had been giving her space like she'd asked, or at least he’d been trying. And he'd promised that they wouldn't talk about magic at all.But she'd had a curse of a night. She needed to figure out what had gone wrong at the meeting, and friend or not, she couldn’t involve an Auror. "Look Ron, I need to make a phone call and take a shower. Let’s talk about it tomorrow."He sighed heavily from the couch. "We don't have to talk about it. You've made your point."The bitter tea scalded her tongue, and she abandoned it on the counter, leaving Ron to sulk by himself in the living room. She went to her bedroom and closed the door, and her stomach rumbled uncomfortably as Ron’s words sunk in.“...attacks in Muggle London…”“...disappear for a whole day…”An insistent tapping brought her attention to the window where a tawny owl perched on the ledge outside. She opened the window, and he squawked, hopping onto her writing desk and ruffling his brown and white speckled feathers. A collection of tiny rolled up pieces of parchment hung from his legs. She untied them and skimmed each message. Two were from Ron, asking why she hadn’t shown up for work, and one was from her boss.Alabastor’s loopy Kurrent script ran all of his m’s and n’s together in a string of Ministry attendance policy and the consequences for infraction, insisting that she ‘please report in as soon as possible’, underlined three times.Her answering machine (courtesy of Dr. Metzker) was flashing, too. Hermione pressed the button and listened to the three Agency messages, pre-recorded, the same voice, the same timbre.“Please confirm your appointment…”“We look forward to working with you…”“If you’d like to reschedule your missed appointment…”That couldn't be correct. Her appointment was tomorrow. She shrugged off her suit and turned on the shower, staring into the rushing water.Images flashed behind her eyelids.stumbling through the dark…falling to the ground...Hands… teeth…Hermione stumbled against the shower door as a sudden wave of exhaustion washed over her. Every muscle felt like a broom had pummeled her. As she let the rest of her clothing fall to the floor, her full-length reflection caused her to mis-step onto her twisted ankle. Scrapes and bruises covered her upper arms and thighs, and scattered purple dots ran along her neck and shoulders.Was that really her?The hot spray hit her back, searing wounds she hadn’t seen on her back.Fangs.The image burst into her mind, suddenly and without warning. How had she forgotten about the fangs? Under the showerhead, she retraced her steps through soap and shampoo.She’d gone to the warehouse. Knocked on the door. Her mind was a mess with the rest of it.Falling… scraping… screaming… glistening white incisors hovering above her…Waking up on the cold floor…Exiting the shower, she addressed the mirror again, examining her shoulders, the front side and back of her neck, across her stomach, even along her legs. The purple dots running in pairs all over her body looked like stings from a swarm of billywigs.Wrapping her hair in a towel, Hermione climbed back into her baggy clothes and opened her bedroom door. A sudden bout of nausea took her by surprise and had her clutching the door frame.“Ron? Are you still out there? I think I need …”The empty couch and missing robe answered her with silence. He must have finally gone home, a discarded copy of the Daily Prophet left in his place.After checking that he was gone, Hermione picked up the phone and dialed. After four rings, she got the answering machine and waited impatiently for the beep. Then she rapid-fired her message as if she was in a debate brawl in front of the Wizengamot.“Dr. Metzker? It’s Hermione Granger. Look, I know it’s late, but I need to talk to you straight away. It’s about the meeting you set up. I have…” Her words halted.What did she have? Bites and bruises. Nausea. Memory loss.“... questions.”She finished by rattling off her pager number and let the phone fall back into its cradle.Hermione gazed around the empty flat she had gotten used to calling ‘home’. Bookcases from the ‘put it together yourself’ store filled an entire wall, with every title arranged alphabetically by subject, just the way she liked it. Her couch had exactly three throw pillows: one for her back, one to prop her neck when she was reading, and one to go under her knees. The kitchen was just the right size. The cupboard contained her favorite crisps. Everything was tidy.Except for the torn piece of paper on her kitchen counter.Ron's scrawl was all over it: "Waited for an hour before coming over. Dinner's in the fridge." She flipped the paper over and noticed that it was a receipt from her favorite restaurant. The one where she had agreed to meet Ron tomorrow.She felt lightheaded. She should eat.Hermione opened the refrigerator and found a take away bag. Her stomach sank to a new low, urgently insisting against putting anything into her mouth.Why would he go to the restaurant a day early?Oh, no. That couldn’t be.Hermione scrambled back to the couch and picked up The Daily Prophet, bringing it to the kitchen. She ignored the front-page article announcing her groundbreaking proposal for “other being equality’ and scanned the top margin.Big block letters proclaimed the date. Hermione read it over multiple times, just to be sure.This was Tuesday’s paper.The restaurant receipt matched the date in the paper. She was supposed to meet Ron on Tuesday.Her appointment was also scheduled for Tuesday, which, according to the messages, she’d skived off.Judging by her boss’s curt notes, she had missed meetings.Hermione never missed meetings.Had she really been gone an entire day?Ron’s reactions made sense now. The frantic questions. The disappointment. He had every right to be upset with her. She'd been gone a whole day and had given him no explanations.She had no explanations for herself, either.The only thing she could visualize in the time between knocking on the warehouse door and waking up on the floor were fangs. Long, sharp, and glistening. Coming straight at her.Had there been vampires?No. It had to be something else. Vampires didn’t attack wizards. It simply wasn’t done because… because… Hermione didn’t know the answer to this. She probably should. The details she’d learned in school were scant, but the person was supposed to know immediately that they had been turned.Unlike almost every other known magical entity, the Ministry did not regulate vampires, except to warn people away from them. They were completely absent from Wizarding Law documents, except for one treaty that she knew of. Hermione made a mental note to look through the Ministry's records in the morning, just to confirm.But even vampires didn’t explain her darkening veins… maybe that was a side-effect of an illness. She’d heard the flu was going around. Hermione dug around in her cabinet and scanned the label on the bottle, noting that it said to take ‘just enough’. She didn’t know what that meant, so she took a single dose and hoped for the best.Her feet padded through the flat on autopilot, plugging in the kettle, setting the automatic coffee timer, and locking up. The effects of the potion were already working, numbing her sore muscles and easing the sting from the scrapes on her skin. Hermione flopped onto her bed and stared at the ceiling, willing sleep to come. Despite having the flat to herself at last, her thoughts kept drifting back to Ron.He had every right to be worried when he'd shown up to her empty flat this morning, and even more concerned when she'd stood him up at the restaurant for a dinner she’d agreed to. If Ron had gone missing for more than a few hours, she'd have torn down every wall between them to find out what had happened, whether or not they were together. She felt horrible for how she’d treated him, when all he wanted was to know that she was alright.Despite their disagreements, she missed him. She missed his quirky jokes and his off-brand fashion sense. She even missed his ability to make an argument out of nothing and how he swept disagreements under the rug after they’d run their course. He was determined to help her. Loyal to a fault. No matter how much she pushed him away, his hopeful face showed up on her doorstep every morning to get her through the Ministry's charmed entrance.Restlessness needled at her, churned around her gut and pounded inside her head, breaking through the potion’s masking abilities, stirring up her anxiety. Now, of all times, she wasn’t in the mood to be overcome by some nameless Boggart plucking away her sanity.Her therapist had told her that if she put a name to her feelings, they could no longer hide in the dark, and become more tangible, a thing to be overcome and conquered.She sat up in bed, finding the word for the relentless gnawing feeling at last.Hunger.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
If you can’t find your place in the world, make one. - Dr. MetzkerAt half-past sunrise, Hermione moved at a brisk pace down Whitehall, hoping that the cool May morning would ease the sweat rolling between her shoulder blades under her long-sleeved business suit. The starched clothing itched her neck, and her entire body ached as if someone had thrown her off a bucking thestral. Around the bend from the Commonwealth offices, the familiar Square came into view, as if her feet had conveniently taken over. The overwhelming physical discomfort would be so much more bearable if she had gone to that dinner with Ron. At least then, she could write off her swimming vision as a simple hangover. Manageable. Explainable.She’d spent half the night trying to remember any details of her missing time, and the early hours of the morning pushing off the horrific sensations that cropped up like unwanted shadows. Even now, rabid forms swarmed in her periphery. Images of starving leeches assaulted the spaces between her ragged breathing, their hands and mouths everywhere. In her mind, it didn’t feel real.Had it all been a dream?As much as she wanted to believe that she had stumbled upon one of the nasty flu viruses circling through the Ministry this season, she could still hear the ripping fabric of her skirt and feel the way she had hit the ground, with the scrambling of limbs all over her.And the fangs. She remembered the flash of white clarity - the only image that tied everything together. Her only clue pointed directly at vampires, but in the remaining hours of early morning, she’d ripped through all the texts in her flat that even cursorily mentioned the blood suckers. Every reference tome she owned staunchly declared that a turned vampire would literally burst into flames walking down the street at sunrise.Hermione had not, in fact, caught on fire. Flame-resistant and sweating buckets, she put one aching foot in front of the other and headed off to work as if she hadn’t missed a day of her life. Armed with a notebook full of cross-referenced volumes to verify once she got to her office, she was going to prove that fanged assailants had not left her unconscious in that abandoned warehouse.Ron, however, had not been a dream.Her heart ached just as bad as the rest of her, thinking about how flippantly she had cast aside his concerns. As the words between them played over in her head, guilt set up residency in the tangle of unease inside her. Between the heavy concealer and brewing coffee, she’d worried how she would appear to him now, strung out and obviously symptomatic.But she didn’t have to act like she had everything under control, because unlike every other morning since she’d moved into her own place, he never showed.Hermione turned off Whitehall, heels clicking down the Ladies’ stairwell to the underground toilets. She dug in her purse and found the Ministry Entrance coin tucked under her tram card and the silent Muggle pager. Pushing through the swinging door, she caught her reflection in the Loo mirror and paused.There she was, Hermione Granger. Hair done up in a professional knot, Pressed suit. Polished shoes. Heavy make-up, but no one would notice an extra layer of powder, would they? Slipping the coin in the stall slot, she opened the door to the old-fashioned wooden seat and the rusty pull chain. But that was the doxy in her plan. If she wanted the pipes to suck her through to the Ministry of Magic atrium, it required a special touch that she no longer possessed.No magic. No Ron. But that’s what she had wanted, right?Hermione bit back her frustration and wracked her brain for a solution. She’d thought everything through, she must have come up with a plan for this too. She could take the visitor’s lift on the street level if she absolutely had to. But here she was, frozen to the spot, afraid of what would happen to her confidence if she had to face one more failure.She'd gotten what she'd asked for, and now she questioned why she’d fought so hard for it. Ron had been with her for so long that she’d forgotten what it was like to not have him beside her, giving her that quirky sideways look of "you've got this, I believe in you."If he was here, he’d pull the chain for her and open the door to his world as naturally as breathing. And there it was, the reason she had worked to put distance between them. His world. The Wizarding World. Every time she looked at him, he reminded her of what she had lost.It hurt more than she would admit to anyone. Her therapist had suggested Pepper-Up potions to get her through the emotional guilt of turning him away, declining his family’s attempts to draw her in, to keep her a part of them. The monthly family dinners at the Burrow had been the only thing she’d still attended, simply because it was easier than getting hammered with a zillion ‘why didn’t you show?’ owls. His large family had been an inseparable part of her life for so long that they had become her family too.For six weeks she’d pushed him away, and now all she could think about was how much she missed him.She shook herself out of her own head. No, she couldn't allow herself to think about that. Focus, Hermione. Maybe, just this once, it will work.She reached out for the pull chain, wanting to believe that the magic spark would be there, zinging through her veins, ready to make some inexplicable miracle come to life, but what if it didn’t work? What if she climbed into the toilet bowl and got nothing but soggy shoes?A kindly old witch in maintenance robes shuffled up behind her. “What’s the matter, dearie?” she asked.Hermione stared at the chain, unable to will her hand to pull it. “There’s something wrong with my wand.” And her arm. And her magic. But if she had anything to do with it, the Wizarding World would never hear the whole sob story.“Ah, that happens,” the woman said. “Step in, and I’ll give the chain a pull. Take the lift to the fourth floor. Magical Maladies should point you in the right direction, and they'll fix you up in no time.”No, they wouldn't, but Hermione forced a thankful smile in the witch's direction and nodded. "Yes, thank you."The water’s pull swept her through the plumbing. As she emerged from the fireplace into the expanse of the Atrium, a squadron of paper airplane memos zinged above her head. The smells from the omelet stand in front of the Ministry Munchies cafe reminded her of the breakfast her stomach had boycotted. Maintenance workers stood around with coffee cups, monitoring the self-sweeping machines that glided up and down the walkways. On the other side of the Atrium, by the fireplaces, Hermione shook out her robe, settled it over her suit, and then spotted an unmistakable mop of red hair in Auror robes pacing near the fountain.Should she call out to him? Should she apologize?Before Hermione could decide what to do, Ron stopped his pacing and looked at her. From his harrowed expression, she’d bet Galleons he hadn’t slept either. All she could do was stare, torn between continuing her current course of independence or tossing it aside and running to him with a thousand apologies for how she’d treated him. He’d forgive her, because Ron always forgave her. Wasn’t that the definition of ‘unconditional’?“There you are, dearie,” the old witch said, coming out of the fireplace to Hermione. “Remember, it’s on the fourth floor.”She turned her head to address the witch, plastering a grateful smile over her worries. “Yes, thank you again.”When Hermione looked back across the Atrium, Ron had that frown on his face that meant he’d seen the exchange and recognized that she’d found her way without him. Then without hesitation, he dropped his gaze and headed towards the Auror’s department.She watched him disappear through the far corridor without looking back. For the first time, Ron had kept his distance and respected her boundaries. Dr. Metzker would congratulate her on this small step towards independence and autonomy.Hermione regretted everything.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The lift shuddered to a halt, creaking open at Level Four. Hermione bustled out, refusing to make eye contact with anyone. A simple task, since most of Level Four’s employees didn’t show until half-past nine. She unlocked the suite of offices with a skeleton key the Minister entrusted to her when she could no longer use her wand. The key rattled in the lock and the door swung open. That was odd. It was already unlocked.She peered into the suite, a collection of three inner offices with a vacant reception desk in the middle. Someone had left the lamps on. Maybe it had been the cleaning witches from the night before. Hermione closed the door and heaved a sigh of relief that no one stopped to ask how she was doing. Today was possibly the worst day for idle prattle, and on principle, she hated to lie.Her boss’s office was dark, and she glanced at the calendar on her assistant’s desk with a red circle over Tuesday, marked “Prep”. The green circle over Wednesday glowed with the word “Meeting” inside it.Well, she had missed the preparation day, but she was here now.She peeked inside the open middle office and found all four chairs empty and the small table wiped clean. This was where they held department meetings and met with clients (Hermione’s boss used more colorful, inappropriate phrases when they weren’t around). Change was a foreign concept for old school wizards like Gringus Alabastor.The Minister had created Hermione’s job, and promoted Gringus Alabastor from Magical Games as her senior counterpart. Broader representation, the Minister had explained to the old school wizard, would give their society fewer reasons to create devils out of each other.For all his older-generation faults, he excelled at choosing sides. Early in their partnership, she’d learned that if she convinced her boss within these walls that her proposals were just and necessary, he would spearhead the motion and push it through the Wizengamot with little resistance. If Alabastor Gringus believed in the cause, the governing body of the Wizarding World accepted his judgment.Confirming that she was alone, Hermione sank into one of the empty chairs. In an hour, she was supposed to address a room full of people. That was going to be difficult when she wasn’t sure she could open her mouth without getting sick.“You can do this,” she told herself. “Get through the presentation first.” She had at least that hour and no one was here to witness her falling apart. She headed to her own office, when a quiet rustle stopped her movement.“Miss Granger?”Hermione nearly tripped over her own feet as a stringy bloke with sandy hair stood up from behind the reception desk and looked at her curiously. His standard-issue Ministry robes clung to his shoulders, and his tie rode too high on his neck, as if his uniform expected more out of him than his current job as her personal assistant.“Merlin, Henry. You scared me!”“Sorry, I’d dropped my quill.” He settled at his desk and regarded her as she tried to come up with an excuse for sneaking around her own office.“Thought I’d make an early morning of it. Looks like you did the same,” she said, opting for ‘professional and timely’. She eased herself around the reception desk, which was for show, so the rest of the world believed he worked in a bona fide position, instead of performing the menial magical tasks required for Hermione to function as a Ministry employee. A little over a year ago, Henry thought he would soon be getting a promotion, and she thought she was experiencing a temporary setback. They had both been wrong.“You look quite pale,” he observed. “Do you want me to bring you something? Water, perhaps?”“Yes, please.”As Henry left for the hall, the skeleton key made a satisfying click in her lock. Her office, like her flat, was a tidy, ultra organized room. Bookshelves lined the walls behind a desk set in the middle of the room. Potted plants on a pedestal stood against a wall spelled to display a calming lakeside view.She gingerly lowered herself into the chair behind her desk, waiting for the nausea to roll through her. Another notion of checking into St. Mungo’s crossed her mind and dashed out the door. The Healers would fixate once again on her nonexistent magic.Flipping through the stack of prepared files, Hermione went over what she was going to say in front of the Wizengamot in… she checked her watch - the crack skewed the hour hand, but the minute hand clearly showed that she had another half hour. Henry put a glass of water on her desk and she nodded.She’d given up Ron, and she’d given up living close to magical people. But Henry was the one person she couldn’t give up without giving up her job. Only three years younger, he had just as much ambition as Hermione remembered having herself. Before her life took a wild turn and blew up her future in a cloud of smoke.After a few minutes of review, she gathered the files back together. “Better get on with it. Henry?”Henry appeared at her open door. She shifted the files and her arm knocked against something hard and cold. Before she knew it, the files were soaked.“Oh!” she cried, trying to save the files while the glass crashed and splintered to bits on the marble floor.“Reparo,” Henry said casually from the doorway and made a flick with his wand that dried the spill.“Thanks,” Hermione said. She didn’t like the way he hovered, waiting to fix something else.“Maybe you shouldn’t be alone today.”“Good thing we’re both headed to the Wizengamot. Meeting starts in fifteen.” She stood up. “I think I’m ready. Where’s the boss?”Henry shook his head and looked at their boss’s dark office. “We’re not going. Boss left before you got here.”“But the files are still here!”Henry leaned harder into the doorframe. “I’m supposed to keep you away if you showed up.”Hermione’s body started shaking, and she wasn’t sure it was from anger or her persistent symptoms. Double Henrys floated in front of her, and she sat back down. “He didn't even take the files. What does he think he’s doing?”Henry’s guilt hid a hint of disappointment behind it. He muttered about their boss under his breath, something about getting sacked if she showed up at the Wizengamot, and a thousand apologies for needing this job.“He’s killing the proposal,” she said, answering her own question.Henry’s head bobbed slowly, and then more enthusiastically, as if his indignation suddenly kicked in and ramped up speed like an abandoned thestral carriage rolling downhill. “Those pixies don’t have a chance. He’s not even going to read the proposal, he’s wiping it off the schedule. He said that it wasn't even our department to care about…”He gulped and swiped at his neck as if swatting away his heated words. One thing about Henry was that he believed in their cause. They both looked at the title of their department in clean, gold lettering above the door to the hallway, “Liaison for Magical Creatures to International Cooperation Transfer Division”. Considering Hermione’s first case was granting House Elves the same rights as witches and wizards, it had been appropriate. The point of it all was that the wizarding world clung to labels - human, wizard, witch, squib, Muggle - and Hermione made it her mission to reclassify and expand on those labels wherever she found inconsistencies or unfair treatment. And even though he hadn’t signed on to cast simple spells all day long, Henry was always her biggest supporter.Never mind that Hermione no longer fit any of the prescribed Ministry labels herself. She refused to make her condition public. It would be too hard a sell to cross those lines. If her boss felt so strongly that the Wizengamot wasn’t ready to deal with pixies as autonomous entities, then no one was ready to deal with anomalies like Hermione.“He says he’s taking the department in a new direction,” Henry finished, red in the face.“A new direction. As in refusing to ‘pander to the unavoidable injustices in the system’?” Hermione read directly from an interdepartmental memo she’d found laying on her desk, dated yesterday. Tuesday, the day she woke up on the concrete floor of that warehouse without her memory.“Over my dead body,” Hermione said.“That was the idea,” Henry said, followed quickly with, “oh, but not your actual body. When you failed to show yesterday, he thought you had gone Muggle with that new side job. That you weren’t coming back.”“I’m here now,” Hermione said evenly.“Yes, and he said that if you came back, I should give you this.” His hands trembled, holding out an envelope. When she took it, his eyes slid to the floor. “To be fair, everyone in the department got one.”‘Everyone’ included only herself and Henry. Hermione tore open the envelope, reading it from top to bottom and then over again. And then once more before she allowed herself to react.“This… what in the name of Merlin is this??”“An ultimatum,” Henry mumbled. “He wants us to move files to the closed bin. Clean house. So he can apply his new agenda when he gets back from the Wizengamot.” Bitterness laced his tone as he stared a hole into the floor.Hermione felt the lump of lead settle in her already protesting stomach. “Where he’s killing the pixie proposal.” She’d worked hard for the Wizengamot to even put that proposal on the docket. She knew it was a long shot, and she had been prepared to push the limits of their patience, if only to prepare them for the next time she needed to push hard against outdated precepts written in stone because ‘why change now?’.“I saw the support it received from the Prophet. The public is already backing it. If he pushes against broader representation with the Werewolf ruling coming up so close, he’s going to kill his career.”Henry sighed. “There’s already press releases waiting to be released as soon as he gets the motion to change the department name.”“The department name…” It needed to change, but if her boss was the one changing it, it would serve none of Hermione’s underrepresented clients. Her tireless lobbying had made possible the transfer of House Elf regulation from the Beast, Being, and Spirit Division into mainstream Wizarding rule. At least she’d gotten werewolf rights re-examined before this… debacle.Realistically, the pixie proposal was a long shot, but it broached the idea that non humanoid entities may have grounds for certain protections. If they considered this proposal, it opened doors for so many other issues that no one had been willing to talk about. Without it, there would be no precedent, and future cases of this type would be twice as hard to address.“So I’m supposed to just sit back and watch everything we’ve worked for fall to pieces? Three days’ notice to close stagnant files from the war trial, or get sacked. Those cases have gone cold for a reason.”“Mine’s a bit of parchment work and filing,” Henry offered. “Yours might not be so bad.”“Fine. Accio file.” She prepared the files for storage while waiting for the new ones to appear... “Well, damn it all!” she muttered.Henry gave her a sidelong glance and walked back to the reception area, muttering ‘accio’ under his breath. Files flew into his hands… from the stack on his own desk, of all places.“Thanks, Henry.” She ignored the flush that crept up her neck, picturing him, or a hundred other wizards, taking her place in this office at a moment’s notice. Hermione resolutely opened the folder and stared at a handful of unfinished reports. “What’s this?” She leafed through the slim stack. “Where’s the rest of it?”“That’s all there is,” Henry said. “He’d already signed off the other files yesterday.”‘When you weren’t here’ hung unspoken in the air. Hermione eyed the file on Henry’s desk. “Is that one of them?” she asked, barely keeping her temper in check.“Yeah. He said I could pick whichever ones I wanted. I thought, you know, it’d be a good way for me to show what I was worth.”She couldn’t argue. Henry’s skills far exceeded the qualifications needed to be her assistant.“So, three days to close this case,” she said, squashing the rolling nausea down.“Technically, two days for you. The clock started ticking yesterday.”Hermione unfastened the loose clip, and a handful of papers landed on her desk. The first report was barely filled out properly, but it wasn’t as cold as it first appeared. Names and dates as recently as a few weeks ago and… she turned over the page. The missing people were Muggles, which wouldn’t have made it into the file except their loved ones, wizards and witches had come forward and declared them. Of course, the Ministry would bury these reports, since the missing people weren’t ‘like them’. A new platform started building itself inside her head, protections from the Ministry for non magical people associated with wizards and witches. Hermione filed that thought away and made quick work of scanning the rest of the information in front of her.The last thing she found was an address for an informant who had been meeting with Ministry representatives, trading names for money. Specifically, he sold information about illegal substances and the unregistered beings who dealt with them. The Ministry was interested in keeping underground commerce scarce, and the war had ruined his family - draining their coffers with fines, payoffs, donations and retributions. As she flipped the pages, she noted the date of the last meetup over six months ago. The last handler labeled the subject ‘difficult to work with’ and the location unsavory and dangerous’. The last entry contained a note about a rogue group allegedly responsible for a string of disappearances. All the evidence was circumstantial, but whoever worked the file before believed that the informant held the answers.Taking stock of the situation, Hermione started a fresh page in her notebook and began a task list. One, compose a list of the missing persons. Two, arrange a meeting with this contact for information that could link the missing persons with this alleged rogue group. Three, find the location of the rogue group and deliver them to the Ministry on a silver platter.In two days. Right.She flipped the file over and read the name of the contact she was supposed to meet.“Of course, Malfoy. Just great.”She hadn’t seen him since the mandatory Ministry formalities after the Final Battle, which included a painful series of inquiries and a lot of funerals. Afterwards, while the rest of the wizarding world came together to rebuild after the war, he and his mother had slunk off to some unknown corner of London to lick their wounds and await his father’s trial. Even the wizarding aristocracy rejected him in the end. She almost felt sorry for the bloke who'd been born into the wrong bloodline and gotten caught up in his father’s misdeeds… if he hadn’t been such a rat-faced, spoiled brat whose sense of nobility began and ended with his family name.Hermione steeled herself against her past prejudices and gave herself a mental rundown of the proceedings. Set up the meeting, offer the right bribes. Or that’s how it sounded when the other departments talked about it in the break room.She addressed the meeting request to the contact from the file and folded it into a crisp paper airplane. Before she could talk herself out of doing something more sensible, she placed the paper airplane carefully on the edge of her desk next to the potted plant. Henry’s genius memo charm allowed her to send messages from the privacy of her own office The spell responded to a mundane action, requiring no magic from the one who activated it. It was a fresh approach to charms work, and she appreciated his ingenuity. Henry was far more talented than an office assistant. The thing was, she couldn’t have the job without the assistant. Hermione tapped the desk three times, and the airplane rose on its own accord and took off down the hall.Then the world became a dizzying carnival ride. Hermione grasped the arms of her chair and squeezed her eyes shut until the spinning stopped. Whatever was happening to her wasn’t going away as hard as she was trying to ignore it. But look, she’d been through a war, she’d survived a curse that had taken her arm and her magic. She wasn’t about to let whatever this was take her down. The pixies were unlucky today, but reasonably, Hermione conceded that today she should not try to be around people.In her current state, she wouldn’t have lasted ten seconds on the Wizengamot floor. They’d have carted her straight off to St. Mungo’s and put her up in a padded room for observation. Her boss would have sacked her on the spot. She regarded her office, imagining for a second not being here, doing this job. She couldn’t. Not even if her boss changed the department name and had her filing lost Ministry uniform reports all day. She needed this place, needed to be around magic, even if it didn’t run through her veins anymore. She needed this like she needed to breathe. And then the surrounding air became thin again.She would never make it to any meeting if she couldn’t get herself together.“I can’t just sit here.” She felt like death warmed over, and her vision swam, but she was determined not to go down this way. Her job, her career, her entire reason for getting out of bed in the morning was at stake. Maybe a cup of tea might settle things. She braced her hands on her desk and rose to her feet, knocking a few papers onto the floor.“Henry?”He popped his head into her doorway again, looking genuinely worried. Then his hand shot out and caught a piece of parchment gliding away from her desk. “Here, you dropped…” He squinted at it and placed it warily back on the corner of her desk. “Good thing you didn’t lead with this. Pixies have a better chance than they ever would.”Hermione leaned over and snatched up the list of reference tomes she’d compiled from last night. Vampires would have to wait. She looked up where Henry was waiting.He smelled of sweat and nerves. She could almost taste his perspiration in the air.He was standing so still…He was waiting for… what exactly was he waiting for?Hermione shook herself out of her head. “Did you need something, Henry?”“Uh… you called me.”“Oh.”Her scrambled mess of a mind tried to refocus on the room around her. What had she called him into her office for?No, wait. She was relying on Henry too much. If she wanted to save her job, it would have to be on her own terms. The room swayed as Hermione forced herself to step away from the desk, but then righted itself as she made it on her own legs to the doorway. She passed her worried assistant who followed her through the reception area and waved him off as she went into the hall. This was the one thing she could do without help, Muggle or otherwise.“If anyone asks. I’m getting tea.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Draco Malfoy sat in the back of the Prickly Arse pub, nursing an empty brandy glass and wondering what the hell his life had become. His table was the only one with patrons around it… two tables actually, which were pushed together for a poker party of eight who had passed out right in the middle of a game, leaving coins piled in the middle of the table. Cards lay face down, some still pressed to the player’s chests. The dealer slumped over, his arm protecting the remaining deck from pilferers, even in his sleep.Or at least that’s how he had made it appear.Eight-thirty in the morning was far too late to finish the hand, and yet far too early to rouse them from their drunken stupor. Draco didn’t mind sitting watch over their sleeping arses. He was just glad they were all there. Relieved they were still alive.Sounds from behind him caused his body to stiffen and stare into the darkened hallway. Clinking glass. Shuffling bodies. None of it good.Last night was his birthday.Let’s sum up twenty-one years so far:Coward.Coward.Patsy.Coward again.Broke and desperately in love with the one person in the world who believed him capable of redemption, and drove a stake through their relationship by stubbornly consorting with the deep dark undercurrent of the magical world.Also, he had no friends.Well, maybe these blokes. They all had his back. On a good day. If he bribed them enough, or got them drunk. Definitely, if he did both.He picked up the cards he’d left at the table and stared at his hand. A straight flush of hearts, King high. He would have won this round if it hadn’t been for the interruption.Long, dark hair in a dress that barely left anything to the imagination appeared from the back hall. Lithe, pale arms and legs that could both wrap around him and strangle him in equal measure moved into the main room. Draco looked up at the face that shifted with the shadows.“Malfoy,” she’d said the first time when she’d paraded a sorry line of barely living beings through the pub at two in the morning.That was it. Not, “how are you?” or, “oh, I see you’re with someone, I’ll come back later.”Draco had hastily cast a Sleeping Charm over the poker table before his guests could ask questions. He’d hoped against hope that she would conclude her business and leave. Except that hadn’t happened.Obviously.“Malfoy.”That’s how she greeted him now as she walked towards him with the sun barely showing through the front window of the pub. A long strand of hair dislodged from behind her ear, revealing a clumped up, crusty sheen. He tried not to think about what that would be.Draco put his hand of cards face down on the table and turned his chin up. “Are you satisfied?”“I need more of your product.”Her eyes became slits and the skin above her upper lip swelled. “With the extra additive,” she said smoothly, as if she were ordering a mixed drink.In a way, she was.“Who are those people?” she asked pointedly. Defensively. She might even have a hint of hunger in her eyes.Draco cleared his throat. “These are my friends,” he said. For now, but she didn’t need to know that. She also wasn’t welcome to them. They were passed out, oblivious, and not on the menu.“My friends,” she said, drawing out the word, “have gotten into something dangerous. Your normal stash wasn’t enough to cure them. They need a stronger remedy. As soon as humanly possible.”The way she said ‘humanly’ was also a warning sign, as if she did not include herself in the description.“I thought you lot were smarter than that,” Draco said.“We thought we had something, and it turned out to be something else. Rumors aren’t always as accurate as one would like to think. We didn’t know we were dealing with cursed blood.”Cursed blood? What exactly had they gotten into?Nevermind. He did not want to know.“What am I supposed to do about it?” he asked, unable to keep the sullen whine out of his tone.He knew better than to get too snappy with her, but it was his birthday, for Merlin’s sake. Or had been when she’d interrupted the game last night. Merlin have mercy on him, there was an untouched cake in the cooler behind the bar.“You have the goods to get them out of it.”Draco wasn’t worried that she brought up the mention of his goods in front of their present company. Half of the people around the table had sampled his goods last night. A few of them were long-time customers.But it annoyed him that she would bother him on his birthday. Didn’t these people hold anything sacred?He did the one thing he shouldn't do in the face of danger. He hesitated.“If you need proof, I’ll just bring them out here and we’ll see how bad off they are…”“No, wait.” Draco scraped his chair away from the table. “How much more do you need?”“How much do you have?”“I haven’t had time to replenish my stock since…”His words died with the large clink of gold on the table. It was enough to make the players around the table suck in a collective breath. If they had been conscious.That gold probably came from someone who was no longer breathing. He saw the dried blood on it. Held her gaze. The standoff wouldn’t last long.Make your move. Make it smart. Or it might be your last.“Sorry, lads,” he said to the sleeping poker table. “I’m afraid we will have to reschedule.”Collective groans rose from around the table. Great. Now, they were waking up.“C’mon Malfoy. Can’t you just deal her in? She’s obviously loaded.”He spoke for the woman before she could lose her temper. Because that was never a good thing. “She’s not here for games.”He swiped the Galleons away, upsetting the pile in the middle, sending the card players scrambling to redistribute the wealth on the table.They muttered and groused and thankfully kept it mostly to themselves.“Coffee’s behind the bar,” he said, getting up. They were angry, but this woman was deadly. He’d only seen people cross her once.And then he never saw or heard from those people again.He would have to choose how to handle this wisely. Vampires were notorious for breaking all the rules, but drinking directly from, or turning wizards, was expressly forbidden. They might not dare to drain the blood directly from his veins, but they could still smite him in an instant once he lost his usefulness.Or worse, they could smite someone else in his place. If only to teach him a lesson about respect and responsibility.Wizard blood was a marvelous cure-all for vampires, temporarily increasing their speed and strength. If they had too much of it, they went bat shit crazy. Draco’s cocktail of animal blood, tinged with a hint of his own blood and then laced with a sedative potion made them feel fantastic… and sluggish, reducing the danger. They usually paid handsomely for the doses and then go home (or wherever they slink off to) feeling invincible yetand groggy.Goose pimples raised on his flesh, reminding him that nothing involving vampires went as planned. Apparently, whatever they’d found in his back room had not done the trick, and this woman was wise enough to wait it out to make sure her minions were cured.“Follow me,” he said and led her to the room in the back, the room where he made questionable deals to stay alive.She gave him one of her winning smiles. “Don’t worry, love. You’re safe. We know the rules.”Draco forced himself to relax, while on the inside he was still wound as tight as a wire. As he opened the door and ushered her into his office, he took one look back at the table where his ‘friends’ were probably cursing his name. Or they were celebrating the money he’d left unclaimed on the table. With friends like those, it was difficult to tell the difference.Then, out of nowhere, a speeding parchment airplane hit him right between the eyes.Happy birthday to me.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Three days…She had almost come to terms with the loss of her magic, but her career?Who would she be without a reason to get out of bed in the morning?Hermione watched tendrils of steam rise from the mug and set the Ever-Heating pot back down on the break room counter. She pulled out the little plastic case out of her robe pocket. The screen remained stubbornly blank. Still no word from Dr. Metzker.Breathe, she reminded herself as her stomach clenched uncomfortably.All around her on the walls, moving pictures of the faces of former Death Eaters grimaced and snarled at her. Everyone in the Ministry had memorized the faces of those that had gone into hiding after the war, who had not yet stood before the Wizengamot for their crimes. Everyone was tasked with reporting them if they ever caught sight of them.Ron had been on several of these recovery missions. He’d gotten whisked back to St. Mungo’s for treatment of wounds and curses more times than Hermione had over the last year. At least they released him with a strengthening potion or a Fast Heal, never questioning his sanity or quelling his hope for a full recovery.She sipped her tea and pondered the posters on the walls. In between the wanted posters were handmade notices put up by Ministry employees with pictures of their family members and friends. On closer look, Hermione realized she had met a few of these people in passing. One was a Squib who she’d seen around with Neville a few weeks ago. “Emilia Greaves last seen on Berkshire Lane”, the caption read. These wizards and witches were asking for answers while the Ministry stood by and did what it did best: nothing.THESE were the people Hermione had vowed to help. THIS was what she needed to make the Ministry take notice of, and her boss wanted to shut it all down and toe the Ministry line. Ironic, since the Minister put her there to do the exact opposite of adhering to their current policies.“Convince Gringus Alabastor that the change is necessary, and you will have your case presented to the Wizengamot.” Those were the terms under which the Minister of Magic had given her this position. But what was going to happen if Gringus Alabastor decided that Hermione Granger was no longer convincing? Would the Minister allow him to sack her?She’d resigned herself to the fact that the pixies would not have their day anytime soon, but these people needed someone to stand up for them. For this, she had to keep her job and keep fighting. Gringus Alabastor was not going to turn their department back into a self-serving bureaucracy that turned a blind eye to the suffering of people they deemed insignificant.Hermione took a tentative sip of her tea, and thankfully, her stomach gurgled into submission. A few minutes later, the caffeine kicked in and masked the sickly sensations she’d been fighting off all morning.Her boss had been throwing around a new slogan for their department: “Make the wizarding world a safer place.” Safer for whom? Safe wasn’t necessarily fair. Certainly not for these missing people. She knew firsthand how the Auror Department operated, and sometimes it wasn’t fair, but they were trying to do the right thing. What was Gringus Alabastor trying to do?“Look,” Henry said, walking into the breakroom. He looked like he’d kicked a puppy. An entire litter of them. “If you didn’t… after yesterday, we thought you might have moved on, and… well, I can’t be Hermione Granger’s magic wand forever, yeah?”She nodded with a tight smile. Hermione had seen Henry’s CV come across her boss’s desk the day before they had hired him. He had brilliant marks, and his spell-casting skills were full of finesse and grace. If she hadn’t known any better, she’d have thought he would have wanted to go into some kind of performance magic, but those jobs weren’t so available in a post-war economy. While her job was the only thing holding her together, Henry’s job was the only thing holding his family together. He needed this job like he needed food and water, and his two aunts and ailing mother depended on him to provide for their livelihood. The war had been cruel to a lot of people, and Hermione would not allow herself to dish out more cruelty to a bloke who had already had his share.But she needed this job, too. What was she going to do now?The answer flew straight into her tea, in the shape of an airplane memo. Hermione snatched it out of the dark liquid and unfolded it before the tea could make the ink run, revealing a narrow, hurried script. Her appointment request had been granted. Today. 11:30AM in a part of London she’d never been before.“I got the appointment,” she said to Henry. “Have you heard of this place?” She held out the memo to Henry.“Yes, but Gringus said not to take you anywhere today. He’s supposed to be out all day at meetings, but if he comes back and sees that I’m gone… I can’t…” He looked almost sick from saying no.“You’re right. This is about proving that I can still do my job, right?”Henry nodded, looking like he’d gotten a splinter stuck under his nail and was worrying it away by wringing his hands together. He was a good guy. Helpful and kind, and passionate about helping the people that had come through their door over the past year.Hermione pursed her lips. “Do you think you could get me directions, at least?”Henry’s pained expression worsened, as if all his fingers had suddenly acquired splinters, and his hands had turned into useless, wrung out appendages. “I’m sorry. I can’t…”Hermione knew that look. She had it every day in front of the mirror before she went to work. This job might be the only thing keeping her sane, but it was the only thing keeping Henry afloat too.“Never mind. I’ll handle it.” Now all she had to do was figure out how to get across town in an hour. Hermione set her mug in the sink. When she made a move to go back to her office, Henry put a hand on her arm.“I truly wish I could help more. But…”She sighed. “I know. I don’t blame you for wanting to keep your job.”“Take the stairs,” he said gently. “The lift gets cranky this time of the morning.”“I’ve got this, Henry,” she said, trying to make the worry stop its mean tango dancing all over his face. “I can find my way.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Still under a haze of dizziness (though the tea had done wonders for her nausea), Hermione stuffed down the guilt over giving Ron reasons to walk away and concentrated on salvaging the part of her crumbling world she still had control over. If her boss’s end game was to erase her name from the Ministry’s payroll and force her groundbreaking social reform efforts to shipwreck on the island of obscurity, then the rest of the Ministry’s bribery funds would go down with her.When the Office of Internal Bribery (not its official name) asked how much she wanted to withdraw for case number 30154DM, she’d fixed her signature ‘Hermione Granger means business’ glare on the witch at the counter and said, “All of it.”And now she had to grapple with the whole magic thing without the assistant who was hired specifically to help her with it.Alabaster Gringus was a big fat…“Hermione!”“Oh, hi, Neville.” Hermione was probably failing to fix her face into a fake smile as the closest person she could call a work friend approached her.Neville Longbottom was still the nicest bloke in the Ministry, never having a bad word to say about anyone. She was reminded of the missing persons poster of the woman she’d seen him with, wondering how he was holding up, if he’d had any word of her… wondering if she should even ask…He cleared his throat. “By the way, I wanted to…”He stopped talking, took a step back, and then cleared his throat again. “I probably shouldn’t get involved,” he said, and then moved away.“No, wait Neville,” Hermione said. “Just say what you were going to say.”Neville hesitated. “Okay, erm. Ron’s been in a snit all morning. Not that it’s your fault or anything,” he tried to reassure her, talking fast, like his words wouldn’t hit so hard if they went faster. “I noticed you didn’t come in together like you usually do.”“Oh,” she said. “I guess…” She didn’t know what to say because she had no idea what Ron had told him.Yes, she and Neville were friends. Yes, they could be considered ‘close’ since the war, and shared experiences. But Hermione had been putting distance between herself and everyone else for months now, and she wasn’t sure where anyone stood with her anymore.“It’s just, he’s been getting more and more reckless. Last week, he had to go into St. Mungo’s after a mission. Twice. I’m sure you noticed the bandages.”Hermione had not, in fact, noticed the bandages. “I did,” she said tentatively.“Anyway, you’ve already had this conversation with him, but I wanted to let you know that I’m keeping an eye on him.”“Yes, I appreciate that. We’re not…” What exactly could she say at this point? “We’re not really on good terms at the moment.”Neville’s face softened. “I know how he can be. I work with the bloke every day.”Neville was a good guy. Hermione hated to see him like this, guilty for something that he didn’t even do.“Don’t worry,” Neville said. “I’m sure whatever happened between the two of you, he’ll come around.”She watched him walk away.He didn’t come around today.The thought ate away at her as she continued down the hall. She didn’t want to become a burden like she had to the people who knew about her condition. Those people weren’t around now, by Hermione’s own design, actually. Dr. Metzker had warned that not everyone would cater to her disability forever. That she needed to stand on her own two feet. Be her own person.“Find something you love,” her therapist had said.She loved magic. She’d fought with her life for it. And now it was gone.Stumbling at the door to the Broken Wand Division, Hermione caught herself against the wall and took a breath, willing the nausea to stay down. The witch inside was just as kind to her as Neville, giving her an envelope with multi-use Portkeys in the form of two small buttons. One to get a ‘client’ into her office, and another to put them out on the street near the Parliament buildings. Hermione took the black button and pinched it between her fingers.Okay, then. Here we go.The sudden spinning almost undid her, landing her out onto the bright sidewalk in the middle of everything and everywhere. Horns honked. Shoulders jostled. Hermione caught herself, this time against a lamppost, and then ducked into the shade of the looming high rises.Where she had been sweating and itchy in the cool morning, now she felt on fire. Not the literal flaming kind, but a deep, unwavering heat that permeated every inch of her. Her overly sensitive skin found relief in the cool shadows. Nausea twisted her gut into knots as she dug around inside her bag for sunglasses, bumping against the pager. Hermione pulled it out and stared at the blank screen. Still no word from her therapist. She clicked the ‘vibrate’ function off and then back on again, just to feel the satisfying hum in the palm of her hand and slipped it into her pocket.Another horn blared, jolting Hermione into action. She couldn’t just attempt to cross London with only a knut and a prayer. Hades would swallow her whole before she got into another taxi. Better to go with the tube. Ugh! Another roll of her stomach had her clutching her bag to her chest as she checked her watch, realizing that she was going to be a half hour late.That didn’t stop her from ducking into a phone booth near Charing Cross Station and feeding a coin into the slot.“Look, Dr. Metzker,” she said after the infuriating beep of the answering machine, “I’d appreciate it if you called me as soon as possible. I know you must be very busy, but I feel like I’m dying here!”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
As soon as Hermione saw the burnished wooden sign for the Prickly Arse Pub, an unsettled ravenous gurgle bubbled in her gut. The cockeyed ‘open for lunch’ letters burned into a piece of fallen roofing from the overhang only added to the hole-in-the-wall vibe emanating from within.She took a cleansing breath, ignoring the pungent aroma of bitters and aged cheese, and attempted to set aside her preconceived notions about the man she was meeting.Everyone has their own story, Let him tell his. And then I’ll pay him and get out of here.People were about. She wasn’t totally alone. Setting her shoulders, she brushed past the wooden leprechaun that propped the door open and stepped into the darkness.A tall man in black stood behind the bar and tracked her movements with a predatory gaze. He kept his eyes on her as he poured drinks for two older beings who looked like they should be behind a different set of bars.The wild-eyed wizard with the handlebar mustache was an exact replica of the face from the collection of reasonably wanted posters that wallpapered the Ministry Break Room wall. The other person-of-bland-interest, a squat man with a sizable eighteenth century top hat, was rumored to claim the title, ‘Propaganda Thief’, while the Auror’s Department labeled him a Grade A Nuisance. According to the fine print, the Ministry wanted to get him under Veritaserum just to see what he knew.Unfortunately, if she recognized these two criminals so easily, they probably knew exactly who she was from her frequent photographs in the newspaper. Suddenly hyper aware of her proximity to potential danger, Hermione rethought her original backup plan of phoning Henry from a telephone box on the street if anything went wrong.Ugh, that might not even work. Despite his willingness to help her with a glass of water, he could, under pressure from their boss, leave her to her own devices if it meant getting his promotion.No, Henry had helped her out more times than she could count. He was one of the good guys, which made her brain slide dangerously into thinking how Ron had been and done the same…And then she resolutely shut down whatever meandering path those thoughts were leading to.Come on. If you’re going to keep your job, you need to focus.She scanned the dark pub and found her subject tucked away at a table in the back, making a serious study of a half-empty glass of amber liquid. A sagging head of platinum hair brushed the top of his shoulders—the grown-out length bringing out more of his father’s features.How long had it been since she’d seen Draco Malfoy? Almost a year… maybe longer? So much had happened since the memorial event, which was way before she’d lost her magic.From what she’d heard (and read in his Ministry informant file), Malfoy’s life had taken a wrong turn and dumped him into the rubbish bin of the Wizarding World’s seedy underbelly. For a split second, she glimpsed the signature Malfoy sense of aristocratic entitlement in the set of his shoulders, but the confidence of his jaw line, once bolstered by the strength of a hundred Death Eaters (most of whom had relocated to Azkaban) teetered on brittle fragility. Not at all like the bratty school boy her memories held so much contempt for.Underneath the wariness, Draco also looked like he’d taken up residence in this viper’s pit and made himself a nice little nest. Which made him dangerous, and worse, unpredictable.Hermione’s eyes darted to the men at the bar. Fortunately, they all seemed to have gone back to contemplating their drinks. Draco Malfoy was certainly examining his with a keen eye, swirling a block of ice and staring at it like it held the secrets to the Dark Arts.Alright, where do we start?Her first instinct was to start with some kind of small talk that would ease the tension, but this wasn’t a social call. There was no need to appeal to any side of him, hidden or not. He was being paid to talk.“Malfoy,” she said.He looked up, did a double-take, and recovered like the seasoned informant the file said he had become. Cocking his head in that familiar, stuck-up way, he motioned with a barely noticeable nod.Hermione pulled the empty chair out from under the table, wincing at the embarrassing shriek it made across the floor. Heads from the bar turned in her direction. Unsettled, she sat across from him, mind racing for an appropriate opening statement.Sitting this close, it was easier to see the difference between the boy and the man. Some of his features had sharpened, some had softened, and if he loosened the scowl, those well-groomed, ladder-climbing girls from Hogwarts would truly have lost their minds over his increased photogenic qualities.Seconds ticked by, with his attention fixed on the swirling amber liquid. Hermione’s sensibilities seethed. The Ministry’s misplaced mercy had piled all of his criminal charges from the war onto the more egregious sins of his father. Others had gone to Azkaban for far less than his personal involvement, and if… she admitted it would be a big if… the man sitting here had truly atoned for his wrongdoings, he should be more than a name in a Ministry informant file connected to illegal activities.Hermione stuffed the barbed anger down, determined to find out as much as she could before the combination of his deplorable life choices and the heavy pub air emptied her already rolling stomach. Whatever she felt personally, it wasn’t her place to put him in his.“What can you tell me about the rogues? You said you had a packet of information you were willing to sell. Does it include names?”He drained his glass with leisurely calm and settled a steady, yet curious gaze on her. “What, no pleasantries? No, ‘How’s life treating you, Malfoy?’ By the way, what’s with your sudden career slide? Did your Cornish Pixie proposal flop so badly that they demoted you to the Department of Bribery and Interrogation?”For a moment, Hermione dropped all pretense and stared at him, gaping mouth and all. “How did you…”He tapped at the Daily Prophet on the table. “It was all over page three. They said that after all the hype, you didn’t even show up for the opening arguments.”Then his tone shifted darkly. “Seriously, you look like dragon dung on a hot day. What’s going on? Why did they send you, of all people?”Hermione’s nerves flared. How hard was this going to be? Get the packet, deliver it to her office. Maybe go home early and get some sleep. A lot of sleep. Malfoy’s face blurred before her, and the world tilted on its side.“Guess I got the short straw. Just give me the…”“You can’t be here. Not like this.” He grabbed her wrist that she’d carelessly left within reach. “You’re whiter than a banshee and your pulse barely registers.” He looked around the pub and leaned in. “I’ve seen this before.”
Even through her double vision, Hermione registered that the bartender had taken notice of them, obviously making her informant nervous.“Come with me,” he demanded.Too light headed to pull away, she stumbled around the chairs as he yanked her to her feet. An arm snaked around her waist to keep her upright. She had no choice but to lean in for support, allowing him to drag her down a long, dark hallway.This was certainly not wise or safe. Hermione’s panic briefly flared, but it wasn’t as if she could do anything at this point. He continued to lead her down the hall, smelling faintly of… coffee?She briefly remembered the ice in his swirling drink.Hermione knew what passing through a battery of protection wards felt like. The vibrations made the hairs on her arm stand upright as they moved through a carved oaken doorway into a plush sitting area. Designed to impress visitors, an ornately carved desk took over the back half of the room in front of a wall of heavy black drapes embroidered with a gold harlequin pattern. The luxury vibe continued with an imposing full-length mirror spanning the length of the room, reflecting two dragon head oil lamps, snouts pointed up, with little flames shooting towards the ceiling. The lamps flanked a thick sheaf of papers on the desk, just out of reach.“Must be for me.” She leaned forward and almost toppled over a low piece of furniture in the middle of the room.“Mind the ottoman. It’s antique.”Her support disappeared and Hermione flopped down onto a sofa that spanned the length of the room opposite the mirror. She tried to get up, back to business, but the arm pressed into her shoulder.“Stay down, Granger, before you fall down. I didn’t take you for the type to get involved in the affairs of bloodsuckers. Who’s your…?” He turned away from her and opened a large double-door cabinet that gave her flashbacks to the Room of Requirement fire from years ago. She’d almost forgotten he was in the middle of a question.“My what?”“The one you report to. Because we can make a deal. I’ve got…”Hermione’s insides clenched again, overriding her attempts at professionalism as she doubled over in pain. The room reminded her of how rich the Malfoy family used to be, and her confidence in the sacks of gold she’d attached to a thin chain under her blouse wavered. The situation had turned into a poorly thought out plan. All she could do was carry on.“We’ve already got a deal,” she said, fumbling with the opening of her bag. “That’s for me, right? The sheaf of papers on your desk.”“Oh, this is much more serious than a Ministry exchange. Tell me who did this to you. And why the hell did they send you here?”Her brain frizzed out. None of this was making sense. Draco Malfoy was supposed to be destitute. What was he doing in a place like this? Her head lolled to one side as she sucked in gulps of air. Her body was aflame. Had he used the Cruciatus curse on her? No, this burning sensation radiated from within her, not from some external source. She sprawled helplessly, half on, half off the sofa, too weak to move.“I work for Gringus Alabastor,” she said through clenched teeth. “The Ministry will roast you! What are you doing to me?”“I’m not doing anything to you.” She heard him rifle through things, unable to see what he was doing.Her brain immediately latched on to the worst-case scenario. “Is this a setup?” she croaked. “Are you connected to the meeting I was supposed to have two nights ago?”Draco stood above her and thrust a clear plastic bag with a dark, viscous substance into her hands. An air bubble wavered at the top as it sloshed into her lap.“What’s this?”“Merlin’s balls! I thought you were supposed to be the genius of the Golden Trio. Hold on.”The bag disappeared. When she tried to raise herself up, her body responded like a limp puppet. Her vision tunneled as the sound of a strong, unwavering heartbeat thudded just out of her reach. If she could only… the pulse… the smell...He pried her jaw open. A blurred, double-set of Malfoys stuck a cold, metal tube between her lips. Viscous fluid flooded her mouth—the copper tang shocked her—she wanted to spit it out at the same time as her hands grabbed for it. For him. Anything alive and moving.She swallowed, and suddenly the pain vanished.The tube disappeared from her mouth. Hermione twisted her body around and saw him looking down at her with a mix of disbelief and bewilderment. And fear. Definitely fear.Eyes trained on him, her hunger rose from deep within and spilled over the surface of her resolve. Still too weak to move, she watched the bag hovering closer. She strained against her fatigue, unable to even lift her head. He held the bag out to her like a patient trainer would to an injured wild animal.“Drink.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
She clutched at the bag, sucking until it became a flat plastic pancake.A throat cleared above her. Muttering. Swearing. Other words resembling the general thought of ‘how did this happen?’ floated above her.“I’m starving,” she said, brain muddled from finally getting what her body had been craving. “Need more.”Another bag landed in her lap, and she stabbed it viciously with the metal straw. She licked the splatter off her arm and practically inhaled the thick liquid.“Who did this to you?” Draco asked, his tone more insistent than before.Ignoring his insistent and increasingly agitated questions, Hermione concentrated on the relief flooding through every cell of her body. She sucked hard on the straw. The second bag flattened quicker than the first.“This wasn’t a normal hit and run that they do to Muggles. They broke their own code. They’re not supposed to…. It’s expressly forbidden.”Draco’s pacing in front of the sofa was getting her motion-sick, and through her singular focus of feeling better, she’d heard what he was saying, but was in no position to acknowledge it. Not when she still had so many unanswered questions about the Freedom Wings Agency, the clients she was supposed to have met that night, and her therapist who wasn’t returning her messages. And not when she was still so very hungry.She sat up fully on the couch. Her wild eyes blazed with the desire for the thing that had quelled the awful sensations she had suffered for the last twelve hours. She tried to stand, but she wasn’t strong enough. Yet. All she could vocalize was the groan of her still unsated need.“More.”“Listen, there are rules about this sort of thing. Without the rules, people die. Specifically, me. So, if they’re turning witches and wizards now, I need to know. Just tell me…”Hermione had enough talk. She had enough of the rules. She grabbed the man-who-knew-what-she-needed by his shirt collar and pulled him down until his nose was even with hers.“I need more.”His eyes widened and his face grew even paler. “Alright, alright, Granger.” He gently patted at her fists until she loosened her grip enough for him to back away. “Just give me a minute.”This time, she sank back into the couch instead of flopping over like a sad fish.Malfoy’s voice held a nervous tremor, but his intentions never wavered. “It’s going to cost you…”“I’ve got it.” Hermione reached inside her blouse, dug around inside her bra and threw one of the extra sacks of coins at him.Eyebrows raised, he checked the weight of her bag and nodded. “Yeah. Right. Coming up.”As he turned to sort through the large cabinet, Hermione’s body quivered restlessly. A new energy coursed through her that demanded the rest of whatever he was taking too long to give her. She launched herself off the couch and stumbled forward, shoving him out of the way.“Wait…” he said, but didn’t move to stop her.She didn’t know what she was looking for, only that she’d know it when she saw it… or smelled it. Hermione closed her eyes and inhaled. There it was, an enticing scent, something powerful. She shoved aside a box of neatly packed bottles, all empty. It was here… or had been…. Her body whirled around, and her nose led her to a small crate on the floor, almost behind the cabinet. She ripped the lid off, tossing its contents over her shoulder. Behind her, Draco caught the insignificant tubes and herbal tinctures before they landed on the floor. When a false bottom appeared, she instinctively yanked a hidden latch until it popped open. Inside was a silver flask with a wolf's head on it. Lifting it up, she inhaled. The odor was exactly what she had been searching for.“That’s the special mix,” he said over her shoulder. “You seem to be new at this. Maybe you should have a different…”She popped the cork and placed it to her lips. As soon as the dark liquid hit her tongue, she felt something within her stir. Something she thought she would never feel again.A spark.It ran through her veins, through her chest, all the way through her fingertips and her toes. Everything felt hot and alive.She spun around. “What is this?”“It’s formulated for my exclusive clients,” Draco said, an edge of nervousness in his smile. “You’ll have to pay double for that.”“Don’t worry, I have it.” Hermione stepped over the items littering the floor around her and upended the flask, draining it in one breath. Whatever this stuff was, it made her feel strong. Powerful. She was no longer dying.She was falling.The small pouches of coins she had hidden on a cord around her neck jingled together against her chest as her back hit the plush Persian rug. She stared up, watching the flame from the candles reflect on the creases in the hammered bronze tiles on the ceiling.One beat. Two beats. Three…Arms lifted her up and set her back onto the couch.“Well, this was an interesting start to my day,” Draco said above her. She felt hands under her blouse, and a tug from around her neck. There was no fight left in her limbs. She couldn’t do anything but listen to the jingle of pouches coming undone, coins clinking onto the table to her right.“Thanks for the payment,” he said from somewhere on the other side of the room.She heard the tinkle of glass, probably Draco trying to clean up after the mess she’d made of his stash. A stack of papers landed next to her on the ottoman.“You just bought yourself everything I know,” he said, his voice nearby this time. “Whoever did this to you is well above my paygrade and I don’t want that kind of trouble breathing down my neck after you leave.”But Hermione didn’t want to leave. She wanted to grill Draco on everything he knew, since he seemed to know a lot about what was happening to her. Ask him why he so readily recognized her symptoms. Wanted to know why, in Merlin’s name, she felt so much better after drinking blood.Also, why couldn’t she move?Draco must have read the panic in her eyes, because he nodded knowingly. “It’s supposed to make them feel extra. Or that’s what they tell me. The sedative should wear off in about an hour. Personal safety, you understand.”Hermione understood nothing but the pumping blood which eased the symptoms that had plagued her since she’d missed a day of her life. Her gaping mouth strained to ask the questions burning inside her, but Draco Malfoy, the first person she’d met who had any clue what might have happened to her, dismissed her prone form on his couch with a hand wave.“Whatever you got yourself into, I don’t want to know.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Draco walked back into the pub, surveying the bustling lunch crowd and briefly wondered how upset the barkeep would be when he found out that Draco had let not one, but two vampires into his place of business without express permission.The barkeep scared Draco. Just a little.For example, the man who owned and also tended the bar had a name. Draco just didn’t know it. Even without magic, the intimidation meter ran high with this bloke with his chin thrusts and grunts. Draco always got the feeling that if he didn’t wait for the man’s eye contact before speaking, his blood might end up all over the floor.As the mid-day staff slung trays with bowls of food from the kitchen to the bar to the tables, neither the barkeep, nor the other two hangers on from earlier could be seen anywhere.Draco silently thanked Salazar’s snakes for the small favor of not having to make niceties with those blokes. He needed more coffee.He also needed to piss after so many hours of waiting through the early morning for that woman and her minions to finish their business. He’d barely roused his poker buddies and shipped them off with coffee and coins, which took way longer than it should have, giving him a whole minute to pour himself a drink and compose himself for the eleven thirty Ministry meeting.Which was one fucked up situation.The barkeep might overlook the breach of protocol with the woman that morning, but the prone form laying on the sofa in his office was a different matter.Hermione Granger wasn’t fully turned, his experience told him just from looking at her. Quite a few Newlings had wandered in and out of this pub, but none of them were like her.He ducked moving trays and maneuvered behind the bar to cast a replenishing charm on the remains of the coffee. Then he filled his bourbon glass with ice and waited. Reheated coffee was a desperate man’s drink. Iced coffee could at least pretend to be a hipster’s defense. That’s what all the trends pointed to these days, anyway.Instead of being able to go home and sleep it off like his ‘friends’ had (and they didn’t even have cake before they left), he was now stuck here, babysitting a half-turned vampire-witch-Newling who was internally processing his extra sleepy additive. For someone supposedly the brightest of her age, it was incomprehensible that she truly had no idea what had happened to her, or why.Add that to the freaky cursed blood situation that the vampire woman’s minions had gotten sick from, and he had himself a stew of trouble. What did that even mean? Couldn’t they smell tainted blood when they got close? Draco’s potion had set their systems straight, but they’d taken all of it.And apparently, they hadn’t learned their lesson, because that woman had placed an order for more. Much more.Fortunately, he had the extra emergency stash to get him started… Ah, shite, Granger had gotten to that. He was going to need a hell of a lot of caffeine to start all over again. Sugar. And carbs. One day, he might be free to get what he really wanted out of life… if this life didn’t kill him first.But we can’t all have what we want, can we?Draco poured the replenished coffee over the tower of ice stacked in his glass and was about to lift it up to his mouth, but then he set it back down again and sighed heavily. Now he had another problem. He needed relief. In a big way.He eyed the cooler that contained his cake and set off down the hall. Unfortunately, the loo queue spilled out of the alcove and wove around the back wall, so he went back to the bar, snatched up his drink and a slice of cake and retreated to the table in the corner to wait it out.As Draco shoveled sugar and carbs into his mouth, the Daily Prophet headlines squirmed under his glass. He pushed aside the coffee, staring at the water ring surrounding big block letters he’d already read once that morning and couldn’t help thinking that everyone had lost their damn minds.HERMIONE GRANGER FIGHTS FOR ALL CREATURES, BIG AND SMALLNow there was someone who had always gotten under his skin in the worst way. Hermione Granger had risen from Muggle obscurity to be the leading darling of the Wizarding World. Conversely, Draco had grown up attempting to stay one step ahead of the Killing Curse and faked his way through his Hogwarts years, fulfilling every dark command.And what had that gotten him? Not a cushy Ministry job. Not accolades and awards. Certainly not the Wizarding World handing him everything he ever wanted on a silver platter.While the Sacred Almost-Twenty-Remaining families ran screaming to the dark corners of the Wizarding World after their total defeat, they cursed the Malfoy name for being too weak to handle a little push-back. Meanwhile, the rest of the world shook Granger’s mudblood hand and thanked her for her service.She hadn’t started out with any of his in-born advantages: immeasurable wealth, a bloodline to rival the Monarchy, and the highest expectations to achieve greatness (or die trying). But she’d made up for her inherent disadvantages in big ways.Comparatively, he hadn’t needed to go into hiding for a year because the Dark Lord was hunting him, so there was that.But also, she drank blood now. That was totally unexpected. Must be a downer, having risen so high to fall so low.Still, every time her name showed up in the papers, it cast an ugly lens on how everything he’d sacrificed had been for nothing.And seriously, who the hell gave a flying fwooper about Cornish Pixies?As the caffeine buzzed through his system and cleared the cobwebs from his head, a persistent pressure below his belt reminded him that his other business could no longer be delayed. Keeping his eye on the slow-moving loo queue, Draco weighed his options. The longer he put off mixing the next batch, the greater his chances were of someone else showing up and demanding a product that he didn’t have.That was a death sentence he could readily avoid.Shuffling past the queue, Draco entered the back office and set up his equipment. Then he donned his potions robe (mostly to protect his clothes, because he was going to at least look legit to his clients). He opened a vein and waved his wand, siphoning a thin red trail through the air into the small bottles lined up on his desk. Draco was an expert at measuring out just the right amount to make his clients feel invincible without making them want to do naked cartwheels in the midday sun. The only thing worse than a hungry vampire was one that had gone insane.Bottled up experiences. That’s what Draco specialized in. It gave people an escape from their otherwise hellhole of an existence while also paying off his enormous debts.Draco sealed his arm with a Healing Charm and capped the bottles, stowing them in a box under his desk. The samples needed to sit for a few hours before dilution and additives. And anyway, he couldn’t stand the pressure any longer.He had to go check the… his thoughts derailed as he caught sight of the lump of wild hair tangled around a Ministry robe, faintly rising and falling in the rhythm of a deep slumber. He stood there, staring at the new complication in his life.Hermione Granger was one of those people who the karmic balance of the universe naturally shifted towards. Nothing unfortunate was supposed to happen to ‘good people’. But when she stumbled into his pub like some injured, wild animal… alright, it wasn’t his pub… but if anyone found a high-profile Ministry employee dead anywhere near him, his life would be over. Especially since they had sent her straight to him.He couldn’t allow her to expire in his presence. So what if he’d taken all the money she had tied up inside her bra as payment and ended up passed out on his sofa, Draco checked his watch, for at least twenty more minutes?She wasn’t supposed to be his problem.Except he’d fed her. And like leaving a bowl of cream out for a stray, he had practically guaranteed that he would see her again.So what the hell was he going to do if… no, when the Ministry found out about his vampire cocktail potions? How much god-awful shite was going on out there if vampires were turning Ministry witches?And what the fuck had he done to deserve this gigantic pile of shite being dumped in his lap?The pressure built up even worse. If he didn’t get relief soon, he was going to burst. Privacy. He needed privacy for this. Draco went back to the pub, banged on the locked loo door. When it didn’t open, he couldn’t wait any longer.He plodded through his office, running his gaze over the near-dead form on his sofa, ignoring the lazy way that his furniture had been knocked around, too desperate to stop and fix the slightly off-center ottoman, and pushed through onto the back patio, heading for the far corner. He unzipped his fly and let it rip on the offensive potted plant, pissing like a horse into the dirt.Fuck Hermione Granger.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Hermione stumbled down the first few steps of the stairwell, catching herself on the railing. Maybe she should tell someone, someone she could trust. Someone who knew more about vampires than what Hermione had gleaned from the generalized reference tomes in her flat or the scant four lines of text from her schoolbooks.Who was she kidding? She had spent the better part of an hour staring at the ceiling in Draco Malfoy’s back room, and he’d seemed to have more practical knowledge about vampires than anyone she’d ever met. He also had the impatience of a troll, pulling her to her feet as soon as her eyes regained focus and shoving the stack of files into her arms. Then there was the side along apparition back to the Ministry entrance where he shoved her onto the stairwell.For a split second, a distinct feeling of something hung in the air, but it wasn’t like the zing of energy when she received messages at her desk in the Ministry, or the atmospheric crackle when someone set off a charm at the Burrow."Is someone following us?" she asked, but Draco shoved her again."Not yet. But I'm not waiting around for them to show up. I can't be seen with the likes of you. Disappear, already!""I thought… it feels like someone is here…"Hermione warily glanced around at the empty corridor and turned around, but Draco was gone.Oh, right. The Portkeys. Hermione found the envelope and shifted the pile of papers under her arm. Then she took out the button and pressed it between her fingers.The familiar pull and twisting in her gut caught her off guard, and then she stumbled into the privacy of her own office.She caught herself on the edge of her desk and set the papers down. The Portkey button allowed her to avoid people like Neville (who noticed things, apparently). As she began sorting through the assortment of barely legible handwritten receipts and contracts, she was noticing things, too. Disturbing things, like how most of the names appeared to be signed in blood.Blood… she tried to push it out of her mind, but the way she’d reacted to the blood bags at the pub kept resurfacing in her mind.She didn’t want to be dumb or in denail about her condition. People in denial made the worst decisions, and Hermione prided herself on being informed.So inform yourself, already!Hermione set aside the file and picked up her short list of research titles. It was way past time to find answers. She turned to face the expansive bookcase behind her desk and pulled down several volumes, rifling through the indexes and flipping each book open to their respective sections. Then she started to read.Three reference volumes later, she still had no clue about her symptoms and why, if she had been bitten and turned, she hadn’t burst into flames. But as she read the same generalized information, mostly constructed from cultural bias and folklore about vampiric abilities of compulsion, unnatural strength and speed, and the ability to become unseen, she noticed that her symptoms had largely disappeared. She was feeling less like she was going to die.But you also drank blood!Frustrated by the gross lack of details, she slammed the third tome shut and reached for the next one. Flipping through every mention of the word from the index, she read of the history that the Ministry had with the creatures of the night, which consisted of scant mentions of a mysterious Council organization that claimed jurisdiction over the Ministry every time a vampire stepped out of line. Finally, she found a small paragraph citing a Ministry journal from the 1880’s, Hermione found a record of a scandal involving Herbert Varney, an employee in the Department for Control and Regulation of Magical Creatures. With apparent noble intentions, he’d formed a cohort to stop a bloodsucker for preying on London women. The whole hunting party was subsequently sacked for "sufficient lack of evidence against persons involved”.Okay, so it was clear that no one wanted to deal with vampires. There was too much controversy over defering vampire jurusdiction to whatever this Council was. But still, Hermione could not find any ruling that declared turning someone into a vampire was technically a crime. In fact, there were no records anywhere of any witch or wizard being turned or even bitten. If any Department in the Ministry would have records on this sort of event, it would be here.So who would be responsible if, say, vampires attacked a Ministry employee, and then turned one?What if you’re dead already? What if that’s why you can’t feel the pain anymore?The uncomfortable clench in her gut was back. It took hold of her throat and constricted her breathing, and she felt like she was going to faint.She knew what that was, and it had nothing to do with vampires.Parchment. Quill. Dip the nib. Take the notes.Hermione forced herself into a quiet, deliberate state of taking notes. She wrote down every instance of historical precedent (there were only three) where the Ministry had dealings with vampires, breathing through her nose, exhaling through gritted teeth. She forced her jaw to relax and closed the tomes. Then she systematically examined the files. Even as her quill hand cramped, she formed neat columns to cross-reference the information her boss wanted with the receipts and contracts in the packet that Draco Malfoy had given her until finally, the gripping overwhelm left her.Logically, she knew she had been attacked by something. She’d felt wild and out of control and near death. But she didn’t feel like a vampire. Not that she would know what being a vampire felt like. It was just, wouldn’t someone know for certain that they’d been turned?The lists and charts she’d created stared back up at her, and Hermione tried to focus on the series of recurring transactions described as ‘pig’s blood’ and ‘mixed bag’. As far as she knew (and she made it a point to know all the wizarding laws), there wasn’t anything illegal about dealing with butchers or animal blood.But she’d seen Malfoy’s product… used the product and licked it clean… He’d admitted to mixing in additives, for safety. She leafed through the records again, searching for his chief buyer.A name, or rather an organization: the Night Hags, kept appearing in the ledger with transaction dates spread over the last three weeks, and a hauntingly familiar address for the drop. She pulled out the business card from her purse, just to be sure. And yes, it matched Dr. Metzker’s neatly penned directions to the warehouse.Hermione sat back in her chair as the air whooshed out of her lungs. What in Merlin’s name was going on, and why did she just uncover evidence that her therapist might be involved in a cold missing persons case?She set down her quill and debated on whether to massage her cramped hand or her pounding head. In a daze, Hermione got up and started to pace. Then she opened her door and went out into the hall. Henry barely looked up from his desk, and their boss’s office remained dark.It was well into the afternoon. The Wizengamot hearing had been over for hours. By now, Gringus Alabaster had shut down her Pixie motion for good. Her heart hadn’t been into the argument like it had been for the house-elves and the werewolves, but the whole ‘deliberate ignorance of an entire species’ mentality went against everything she stood for. If she was going to fight the good fight, she would have to keep her job.“Accio mug,” she recited out of habit while walking towards the Ministry break room.In her head, she was sometimes still Hermione Granger, the brightest witch of her age. At least she would be when she sorted Malfoy’s file and presented the evidence to her boss that he so desperately wanted.She rounded the corner and barely caught the black mug that came hurling at her through the air—a golden Ministry seal shone up at her when she turned it over in her hand. The familiar gift from her friends celebrating her first Ministry job, friends who never came around anymore because she kept pushing them away.“Hello? Is this some kind of joke?” she called out, but when she rounded the corner, the coffee pot with the never-ending heat charm was alone and empty.She refilled the pot at the tap, rummaged around in the cupboard for a box of English Breakfast, and in a moment’s time, poured steaming water into her mug.“Accio… oh, there they are.”Hermione walked to the other side of the sink. As she reached for the sugar cubes, a searing fire shot from her shoulder all the way down her arm. She screamed and dropped the mug with a crash into the porcelain sink, doubling over as the unexpected pain invaded her body, running through the arm that wasn’t supposed to feel anything.She felt stupid, running to the loo and bending over to check under the stalls, but she had to check if she was alone before she tore off her robe.It burned. The arm that had been numb for months burned like it was on fire. With a sob, she unbuttoned her blouse and examined her shoulder. Her skin was clear and pale, and her cursed forearm was pale too, the veins slightly lighter than she’d seen them before. She shrugged completely out of her sleeve to get a better look.Her hand…With great concentration, she flexed and contracted the gnarled fingers, twisting her wrist and extending her once dark, but now ash-colored digits for the first time in a year. The entire appendage burned fiercely, but that only fueled her elation.Pain continued to race through her arm as she adjusted her sleeves and buttoned up her blouse. The bang of the loo door caused her to quicken her movements, straightening the collar line of her robe, mind buzzing with new information, new sensations.Back in the break room, the broken mug had vanished from the sink. Right. Maintenance must have cleared out the mess. Hermione needed a do over.She reached for the cupboard, but then hesitated. What if…“Accio mug,” she whispered, reaching for the cupboard, and this time, she witnessed the door fly open and the Ministry mug zip into her hand.Hermione’s hand quivered as set the mug gently down on the counter. In slow motion, as if her hand was about to shrivel up and return to its previously useless state, she reached out and grasped the handle of the pot and poured hot water over a fresh tea bag. Hermione cupped both hands gingerly around the mug and headed back to her office, staring at her hands the whole time. Waiting for this miracle to be redacted at any second.Magic. She’s just done magic for the first time in a year.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Hermione Granger.”She jolted to a halt at the door to her office, causing hot tea to slosh all over both hands. Hermione rushed to her desk and put the mug down, shaking the scalding water off. Then she looked up to see someone sitting in her chair.Not just someone. A man who had gray, but black, but graying, sort of black hair, and a hookish-yet-Roman… no, not that big of a nose—and piercing eyes that held color, yet sucked the light right out of the room. Thick-tread, lace-up boots rested on her desk.Looking at him gave her a headache, so she turned slightly away and stared at the boots instead.Resting on her desk.“Did you have an appointment?” she asked, trying for an authoritative posture. This was her office. And her chair.“Pardon my appearance,” his voice floated through the air, as smooth and unforgettable as the rest of him. “You see, I really shouldn’t be here.”“Then why are you here?” she asked, finally locking her eyes onto the out-of-season black trench coat.“There is much to discuss,” the vague-looking man said. “Close the door.”Hermione pushed the door shut, flicking the latch closed before she could even think of what she was doing.Merlin, she’d just read about this very thing. Without a doubt, a vampire sat in her chair, using his ability to blend into his surroundings, to be seen and unseen at the same time.“How did you get in here?” Hermione’s words stuttered out of her, but at least she got them out.“Same as you.”“But you’re not a… You’re a…”The vampire didn’t blink. “Tell me what you know. Everything.”Hermione felt compelled to do exactly what he said in that very instant. She would take him to the Prickly Arse Pub and show him the blood Draco had stashed in the back room, and he would…She blinked wildly, and the compulsion slowly faded. This powerful being had gotten into the Ministry, undetected. He’d gotten through a locked door. Then, he’d used some type of compelling mind control on her (an illegal act according to at least three statutes and regulations she could cite off the top of her head).Hermione’s mind reeled. There was no time to process. No opportunity to research counter arguments, unsure of what the argument even was. She needed facts.She stared straight at the dark man with the crooked nose in the trench coat, with eyes that pierced through her nerves. He wasn’t so difficult to focus on now that she’d broken through his suggestive power.“What do you want?”The man was still sitting there, not offering her any information about himself—sitting there, thinking he could order her around—sitting there…“And get out of my chair!” she demanded, putting her hands on her hips. This was still her office, and she still had a right to sit at her own desk during an interview… interrogation… whatever this was.“Impressive.” The man rose, towering a good foot over her. Accustomed to being dwarfed by giants, centaurs, and half-trolls in her line of work, Hermione stood her ground.But this man seemed more imposing, more dangerous than even the sea of Wizengamot elders she was supposed to have faced that morning. This wasn’t magic. This was intimidation of a darker kind. Hermione took a careful step back and regarded him with all the professionalism she could muster.“Who are you?”“They call me Burns,” he said. “I was sent to take care of a group of rogues who had fallen outside of the Council’s control. They gave me the slip in Prague and now I have you to deal with as well. Though it would be useful to have someone on the inside at the Ministry of Magic.” He stared into a corner of the room, tapping his fingers together.Hermione’s arm throbbed under her robe, reminding her of what she’d been through in the last few hours, the pressures of her job, her personal life, and everything else. Another complication was going to tip her over the edge of short-lived, hopeful enthusiasm and plunge her back into the pit of ‘nothing I do is going to make this better’.“Why should I help you?”“I was under the impression that ‘helping’ is what you do.” He gestured to the certificates and plaques lining the wall next to her desk. Framed letters hung between the awards, thanking her for unraveling the Ministry’s oppressive sanctions that kept certain kinds of people from living their best lives. The vampire peered closely at her again and then occupied the seat across from her on the other side of her desk. He sat back in contemplation.Hermione scooted around her desk and sat in her chair, busying herself with shuffling papers and unspoken deadlines. After a few minutes, the man was still there, and worse, he still maintained an unhurried, unwavering gaze.“I want the location of the rogue vampire nest.”“Well, that makes two of us, I’m afraid.” Hermione looked up from her paper shuffling. “What will you do once you find these rogues?”“Exterminate them.”He was worse than her boss, going for the “kill everyone who stands in my way” strategy. Hermione was sick of dealing with people who thought they could fix the world with their one-sided, strong-armed authoritarianism. And he had the audacity to show up in his trench coat, in her office and sit in her chair without an “are you busy this afternoon?”, or any notice at all.Everything about Burns the vampire made her angry. Before she knew it, her hand shot out, gripping an owl-shaped ink blotter tightly in her fist. The weight of it felt like it could do some real damage if she hurled it fast enough.Hermione froze when she realized she was holding the ink blotter above her head, aiming at the vampire. What in Merlin’s name was happening to her? Gryffindor’s gauntlets, now she was acting like an impulsive troll. Tossing things around the room solved nothing. Hermione took a cleansing breath and resolutely set the blotter back on her desk.“Anger fuels the best of us.” The dark man flexed his fingers. His unhurried non-reaction angered her even more. If she was confident in her magic, she’d show him a thing or two about what happened when people snuck into the Ministry of Magic unannounced.She steadied herself, refusing to be rattled by the stranger in her office. “The Ministry needs this case closed, and those people are the evidence I need to close it and keep my job. You can’t have them. This is Ministry jurisdiction.”The vampire’s long incisors gleamed in the harsh office lighting. “Lucky for you, no ‘people’ are currently involved. Vampire affairs are never under the jurisdiction of wizards. Look it up.”She just had moments ago, but she wasn’t going to admit that to someone who had illegally entered the Ministry so easily. She had standards… principles… People who needed information weren’t so quick to kill without first getting what they came for. Strategically burying Draco’s file under a stack of illegal gnome extermination records, she continued the conversation.“Why do you need my help if your Council is above the Ministry?”“Because you are uniquely positioned to flush them out for me.”“Excuse me?”Burns gestured to the door with a slight nod. A beat later, Henry popped his head into the office, waving a manilla envelope at her. “Ms. Granger,” he said, completely ignoring the dark stranger sitting in her office. “This came for you.”“Thank you, Henry.” She got up to meet her assistant at the door and took the envelope, which weighed close to nothing.A single sheet fell out, containing a small, two-line explanation in tight script written in the center of the otherwise blank paper.“It’s an anonymous demand for a Portkey to Hungary,” she read. “They’re on the run.” She looked into the eyes of the vampire as everything started to make sense to her. “From you.”The vampire waved a hand at the note. “It’s not anonymous when you know who it’s from.” He peered closely at her. “You do know who it is from, don’t you?”Hermione shuddered in a breath and smelled the taint on the note. She didn’t have names or faces, but she knew that smell. “How…”“You can’t give them that, of course,” Burns told her. “What are they bargaining for?”Hermione read the paper again. Over and over. If she said it out loud, it would be real. Hermione didn’t want it to be real, but there it was.“They will reverse the ritual.” She looked up at the vampire. “What ritual? Is that why I drank…” she swallowed uncomfortably… “blood?”The vampire Burns shifted in his seat. “You don’t remember.”“Not all of it. I only have flashes. And bite marks.” And nausea. And she drank blood. And…“Do you want to?”No, she didn’t want to find out that she’d gone from one pathetic state straight into another. But ignorance never served anyone well.She stood and squared her shoulders. “I missed a whole day, so yes.”Burns rose to his feet and put an icy hand against her forehead. “Close your eyes.”Hermione did, and suddenly she remembered.She remembered being pulled to the ground, hands and mouths all over her. She remembered the prick of skin all over her body and the screaming. So much screaming.She had been screaming.Hermione shuddered out of the trance and suddenly didn’t know where to put her hands. Didn’t know how to look at the vampire, or anyone, after having all of… that… released into her head.“I don’t know why they thought the memory modification was a good idea,” Burns said, casually retaking his seat. “It seems like they did a sloppy job of it, because you only needed a small push. If you had tried harder, you’d probably remember everything on your own. You just didn’t want to.”Hermione’s hands shook with the knowledge of exactly what she had been going through since she got back to her flat. Her knees knocked together. She stumbled to her chair and almost fell into it.“What am I?” she asked. She needed to know. She needed someone to say what she couldn’t, so that she could deal with it. Rationally. Logically.As if that were an option.“They only half-turned you. It gives the experience without eternal damnation. Fledglings must make a choice to be fully turned or reverse the ritual to return to their previous state.”He spoke like this sort of thing happened every day. Hermione couldn’t keep her hands still enough to take notes, or summon security, or… anything. Her mind reeled. What had he been saying? Something about being half-turned?“I… I’ve never heard of such a thing.”“It’s very rare. Usually, it’s done as part of a bargain. As you saw here.” He indicated a long finger at the note Hermione had inadvertently crushed in her fist. “Under the right circumstances, it’s reversible.”Air whoosed back into Hermione’s lungs. Reversible? That could mean she wasn’t eternally cursed. Not like her magic… oh, there was the stabbing hurt again. No, she was definitely still with the living.Her boss wanted to nail the people responsible for the random attacks. The vampire who sat in front of her wanted the rogue vampires to satisfy his Council.Why couldn’t she do both? Hermione didn’t know how vampires worked, but if this one had strolled into the Ministry without tripping any alarms, he could handle getting his fellow brethren in and out of the interrogation rooms in the Auror’s Department. After she’d brought them in under her boss’s name, saved her job, and gotten the ritual reversed.“You can have them after I’ve brought them in for questioning.”“And how do you intend to do that? By promising them an audience with the Department of Portkey Management? Imagine what would happen if you invited a coven of rogue vampires into the Ministry’s bowels.”“You’re here,” she challenged.“Am I? Who would believe you if I simply disappeared?” Burns said and then faded into some kind of mist right before her eyes. Then his appearance solidified almost immediately.“Nice trick,” she quipped before she could stop herself. “I have a full plate at the moment, and tight deadlines to meet, so if you wish to discuss anything further, kindly see my assistant for an appointment.” She motioned at the door and shuffled more files around, willing the man to be gone.But of course, it wasn’t so easy to get a disappearing man to leave. “Before you get caught up in trying to regain your previous life, there’s something you should consider.”Hermione looked up from her shuffled parchment. “And what is that?”“You might not feel it now, but your body is dying.”Hermione felt the harsh sting in her arm return, radiating all the way to her fingertips. She clenched the hand that hadn’t moved in over a year. “I’m not… That’s impossible. I’m finally getting better. My magic…”“It isn’t yours,” Burns said frankly. “It’s temporary. If you had any magic of your own, I would have killed you before you used that Portkey to return to the Ministry.”Hermione shuddered at the threat. “But…”“You’ve fed on the blood of wizards, I can smell the taint on you. At first, you feel its power and strength,” he explained. “Most vampires only get the rush, the thrill. You can use the magic because you’ve been trained to channel it. When it wears off, you will crash hard. Each time you drink tainted blood, you risk losing your sanity. Next time, I recommend you feed from a less contaminated source. And you will need to make your final decision before your body decays beyond repair.”Hermione stared up at him. “How long do I have?”“By the looks of you, twenty-four hours, give or take a few.”“Twenty-four hours! But that’s not enough time to even start the Portkey acquisition application!”Burns shrugged. “I’d be more concerned about survival. You must either return to your previous state, which requires the vampires who did this to reverse the ritual. Or, you can complete the transformation. At the moment, you are useful to them. If you decide to turn, you will be uniquely positioned to assist me. But be warned. If you insist on ignoring your situation, you will no longer have a life to worry about. Also, if the rogues are allowed to remain free, more innocent people will die.”Hermione faced away from him, steeling her nerves. “There’s got to be a way…” She turned to face the slowly spinning chair as if someone had just gotten up. The door latched itself shut, the only sign that anyone else had been in the room.She hurried to her door and stuck her head out to find her assistant busy with his own stack of files. “Henry, did you see anyone come through here?”Henry looked at her like she had grown two snake heads. “Just myself. And you. Were you expecting someone?”“Never mind,” Hermione said, closing the door. She stared down at the evidence on her desk, the crumbled note in her hand.Her heart was still beating. Her lungs were still filling and expelling air. But there was a distinct sense of finality about it, as if both organs were ready to give notice and take early retirement at any moment.Hermione thought about the consequences of bargaining for vampire rights inside the Ministry. The ridicule. The loss of credibility. Then she thought about her boss taking her job away if this coven were to disappear before she even had time to bring them to justice.Because that’s what they were. From the note, Hermione could sense the group of them. From her memory of the attack, she could see them hovering over her.Hermione’s hands fluttered up to her face to wipe the sting of tears away. How could this have happened? All she ever wanted to do was good in this world. All she ever asked for in return was to be appreciated for her efforts. But circumstances had been conspiring for over a year to cast her out.Her magic had left her, but she was still willing to fight for the people who needed her voice.Was she willing to die for them, too?The whisper in her blood, the strength she wasn’t supposed to have, the vampire claimed that it was a false promise of her magic returning to her. Whatever was in that bag Draco gave her, it was only a bitter taste of what she’d lost. A self-adhesive bandage to hold her body together while it tore itself apart from the inside.And the file… disclosing the location of the rogue nest would save her job. But if Burns was right, she wouldn’t be alive long enough to do it.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Hermione slammed open the door to her flat. Then she slammed it closed, knocking the small key holder off its spot on the wall next to the doorframe.Taking out her frustration on the door wasn’t helping, but what else was she supposed to do with all the new information messing with her head? Add in her hand and her magic, and the threat of death in twenty-four hours (give or take, whatever that meant), and she could honestly say that she might have gotten just a little overwhelmed.She stared at the key holder splayed on the floor with all of her keys scattered across the tile.Nope. She was not going down like this.Hermione tore open the kitchen drawer just as forcefully, almost ripping it out of the cabinet. The accumulation of knick knacks, loose ends, and package leftovers shifted and spilled over the side, joining the keys in a jumbled mess at her feet. The double-sided sticky pads were under a collection of bread ties (Benny from downstairs said they were useful to keep around), and she selected a double-sized pad to replace the old one. Paint and plaster came off the wall (she’d deal with that later), and the fresh pad, along with the keyholder, got shoved back into place.She slammed the front door a few more times, watching the keys rattle around to the rhythm of her frustrations.VampiresDeadlinesHer job in jeopardyFor a long while, she just stared at the tiny hooks, waiting for the piece of wood to fall back to the ground. As it held fast, her vision blurred. Hermione rapidly blinked her world back into focus. Besides her short, potion-induced naptime on a sofa in the back of a seedy pub, this might have been the longest she’d stayed absolutely still all day.She hadn’t stopped to eat. Hadn’t stopped at all. By some twist of fate, her boss had been called into another Wizengamot hearing that was likely to continue through the week. Both she and Henry had gotten memos citing that their deadline had been extended accordingly. Thankfully, it had bought her the time to bring Malfoy’s files home to sort through. She found herself clinging to the crumpled paper airplane memo from her boss, a promise that she could get through this, keep her job, work through the complications that the vampire… Burns… had set forth in front of her.She heaved her overstuffed bag onto the breakfast bar. Was she feeling faint? Were her hands shaking?Did it matter, though?Come on, Hermione Granger. You’re stronger than that. Only one debilitating breakdown is allowed per lifetime. Over the past year, you’ve already had your share.A lot could be done in a few extra hours. Look at what she’d done back at Hogwarts with the Time Turner. She’d saved lives, turned the tide, released a wronged man. She could still make a difference.She turned her attention back to the stuffed bag. Remembering where those files had come from, the blood she’d consumed and the way she’d felt afterwards. Remembering the way she felt now, as if coming down from an extreme high of Pepper-Up potions.She didn’t want to believe that man… Burns… when he told her that if she didn’t give him the location of the rogue nest, more people were going to die.Lives were in danger. Countless, faceless lives.Well, now she couldn’t ignore the rogue vampires and their unreasonable demands. Had he known that was just the push she needed?All this time, she’d been fighting for the underrepresented, the people that the Ministry was unwilling to see clearly, to prove that they had a valid place in the Wizarding World. To prove that they belonged, and their unique talents should be valued and not dismissed because they did not conform to typical wizarding society.And what if she did as the vampire Burns said and saved those potential victims? And then lost her job because of it? If she was no longer in a position to fight for them, where was her place in the Wizarding World?Who would be left to fight for her?Shame splashed messily into her soup of emotions, causing her stomach to turn over for different reasons. Her job had always been the most important thing in her life (except for Ron, who was now an exception to the exception since he wasn’t supposed to matter anymore). How could she even consider putting nameless others’ lives at risk for her own personal gain? When had she become THAT person?A squawk shot out from her kitchen, and Krustus landed clumsily onto her kitchen island. His pale underwings stretched out, splaying its talons against the formica surface, unable to find purchase. He had a tangle of messages on his legs and looked forlornly at her for help.“Hold on, Krustus, I’m coming,” she called as the speckled owl hopped out of the way. She must have forgotten to close the window from last night, but at least he didn’t have to wait outside.“Ugh, another one?”She untied the Ministry scroll from Krustus’s leg and scanned the contents, but it was just a formality, a duplicate notice to the memo she’d received in the office. Never accuse the Ministry of missing an opportunity to produce pointless redundancy. Then a signature caught her eye: this wasn’t just a duplicate, it was a signed and sealed copy from the Ministry’s personnel department. Gringus Alabastor had officially filed her probation notice. The Ministry was actually going to sack her, with cause, unless she complied with her boss’s explicit terms.The hard deadline was a week from today.The case, along with all threads, needed to be closed.Warrants should be issued for the arrest of any wrongdoers, along with hard evidence to back it.The location of the wrongdoers and the means to bring them in should be reported and executed (which was not her department, and he knew it).Did Alabastor think she was going to lean on her connections in the Auror’s department to save her own job? In the past, she wouldn’t hesitate to do that, but after the vampire showed up in her office…She was going to lose this fight. Unless…“Do you have anything else for me, Krustus?”Her owl pecked at the stray strands of frizz that had escaped from her business bun as she bent over, hoping for a second scroll, a postcard, something that looked like it came from her therapist’s office, or a note from Dr. Metzker herself. Hermione dug through her bag until she found the pager, still with no messages on it. Krustus nipped at her fingers and she threw him a seed treat from the tin on the counter.Then a sickly thought came to her, a disturbing image of her therapist in a pool of her own blood somewhere dark and abandoned. Would the rogues have gotten to her too? Would Hermione be able to connect them to her therapist’s disappearance as well?The bag on her kitchen counter sagged and then spilled over like a poorly shuffled deck of cards. Hermione attempted to re-stack the pile and ponder the complexities that had hit her up in the last twenty-four hours. Fatigue was settling into her bones. Normally, she’d eat something, but her stomach still wanted nothing solid. Coffee would at least keep her alert. She poured the cold coffee into a mug and stared at it. Out of reflexive habit, Hermione made the wand motion with her empty hand, and a jolt ran through her arm.Bubbles rose from the murky water inside.Wide-eyed, she stared at the steaming mug. With trembling hands, she cupped the warmth of the mug and took a small sip. Hot liquid scalded the tip of her tongue, and her stomach flipped. It was a simple spell, but she couldn't disregard the thrill of rediscovering what she thought she’d lost forever. Twice in one day couldn’t be a coincidence.Burns had said whatever strength she gained from the mix of wizard’s blood wouldn’t last. He’d also said that it was dangerous, and that it came with a price… and that some vampires could get a high off it, while drinking a certain combination of… was that what Draco had given her?Hermione wondered how much she was capable of…It isn’t yours…Burns’ words stung. But the truth was in the steaming mug, which made her want to know what else she could do with whatever this was.She hurried into her dark bedroom, stubbing her toe on a trinket Krustus had dragged around her flat. The pull of an inexplicable energy pulsed within her as she opened her bedside drawer and rummaged around for the item she was searching for. A small victorious cry escaped her as she wrapped her fingers around the familiar wood of her wand. She lifted it out of the drawer with her newly healed hand. The smooth wood soothed her burning fingers, and a buzz ran through her entire arm. It was like her body was trying to reconnect with it.The spark between her fingers and the wand, she could almost see it.She itched to try another simple spell. Ignite the wick on the lavender scented candle next to her bed. It was far less jolting than ‘Incendio’, and most witches and wizards performed it wordlessly. It only needed a thought.The flick and swish was reminiscent of the very first Hogwarts spell, except the order was backwards. It happened so fast that Hermione had little time to think it through. The wick began smoking, and then a small flame appeared. Elated, she watched the glow intensify until it ballooned and then exploded into a cloud of sparks and smoke, covering her pillows and bedsheets with small charred balls of lavender scented wax. Before she could react, the wand wrenched itself out of her hand and flew back to the drawer. It rattled all the way to the back, and then the drawer slammed shut on its own.“Wait!” With a shriek of frustration, Hermione rushed to the drawer and tried to pry it open, but the drawer held fast.Fatigue hit her like she’d just apparated into a wall. She sank to her knees. Colors faded from the room like a sun sinking below the horizon.Her next thought was Draco Malfoy. He knew more than he was letting on.He could feed her...As soon as she thought about it, the craving hit, stronger than it had ever been. Images of the wolf’s head bottle, the way the red splattered against her arm when she stabbed the blood bags with the metal straw… Half of her attempted to fight off how her needs twisted into something equally repulsive and undeniable.The other half of her begged to go along for the ride.One thing was obvious. If she didn’t get up right now, she would die alone. Somehow, she made it to her closet. The simple intention of going out seemed to quiet the monster within her that tried to rip through her skin.Half-turned, she reminded herself.But then new, disturbing thoughts rushed through her, superseding right and wrong, driven by need and survival. Blood was out there, on the streets, in the buildings around her. Downstairs, even, in Margaret and Benny’s flat. She could just go over there, knock on the door, ask for an after-work coffee, and then…Hermione shook those unwanted thoughts away. That was not happening. She was not a monster. She was still capable of doing the right thing.She would bring more Ministry funds to the Prickly Arse Pub and purchase another drink from Draco Malfoy. Just enough, until she could get all of this reversed, like Burns had told her.Her body remembered how the blood felt, thick on her tongue, and how it woke up her senses. How Draco Malfoy had watched her with a mix of fear and fascination, and how she was the one who had demanded more, and he was the one who had given it to her. Now that she knew what she needed, it was all she could do to slow herself down enough to be presentable about it.Brushing her hair became an act of rebellion. Putting on her clothes —no, not the leather pants Ron had talked her into that one time when they went to Spain… she wasn’t out to seduce anyone—she just needed to look presentable. Low-rise skinny jeans would do… When was the last time she had worn those?She stared once more into the mirror, smoothing down the front of her gold-lame flowy top, checking that the straps along her back hadn’t tangled up as she’d pulled it on over her head.Her arm… oh, her arm looked positively normal for the first time in forever, which was why she had dared to pull out the sleeveless outfit she’d bought on a whim and then hidden away in her closet for ‘one day, maybe never’. Her shoulders were on the pale side, but it was already dark outside, and would be even darker in the pub, so who would notice? Hermione pinned back a few of her wavy strands, finger-combing the rest of her hair to frame her face. Making sure she looked like any normal person, going out for a drink.Going hunting...
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Being strung out on potions was not a good look on anyone, least of all Draco Malfoy. Through the reflection in the brandy glass, his bloodshot eyes clashed with his pale complexion and brought out the wrong highlights in his otherwise platinum hair. Despite the off-putting appearance, he felt bloody fantastic.His opponents around the poker table didn’t give a flying arse about his half-fried brain or the way he couldn’t keep his concentration on the card game. All they cared about was how long it would take him to throw his dwindling stack of chips into the pot, just to save face.“I have a very nice face,” he drawled, looking around the table.Wait a minute. Did he just say that out loud?The client to his right stared at his cards and half-raised a thin eyebrow in Draco’s direction. The hairy one next to him tapped his fingers against the table in a nervous rhythm and stared at Draco, waiting for the self-control to slip.Oh, yeah. He’d probably said a lot of stupid shite in the last thirty minutes. He checked his watch, verifying that yes, in the thirty tense minutes he’d been sitting here, he was still breathing, still hadn’t collapsed in a pool of his own blood, and was still running his mouth.Up until this moment, Draco had wagered that he could win back the pot, but the tingling in his fingers signaled the after effects of the high were almost upon him. His fuzzy brain reminded him that his clients were all impatiently waiting for the inevitable crash, that he had five minutes, at the most, to disappear before his dignity took a big hit.As of right now, he didn’t see a way to retreat gracefully into the privacy of his office, let alone utter a plausible reason to get out of this chair.Regret. That was his life.This potion wasn’t a vampire cocktail. It was for these blokes, the ones who dealt death as easily as they dealt their cards. It hadn’t taken Draco too long to figure out that desperation came in all shapes, sizes, and flavors. Being a connoisseur of desperation himself, he understood how people on the edge of their sanity needed a moment to forget their reality, if only to garner the strength to move forward. They were also willing to pay handsomely for the privilege.Yes, his big money-maker was blood, but while his poker clients weren’t blood drinkers themselves, they were certainly willing to expand Draco’s supply chain to their associates. Vampires were the scourge of the night, but they also are great pilferers with deep pockets, thanks to the pockets of their victims.Look, if he was going to live with regrets, he might as well turn a profit.Just as Draco was trying to redirect his slowly waking brain to determine just how he could get out of his chair before the real disaster began, the pub door swung open, and an unexpected visitor drew his attention away from his current problem. The rest of the room also pivoted towards the newcomer, as if someone had cast a spell for their heads to move in unison, like a sloppily choreographed flash mob.They were curious. Interested. Attracted, even. Something about the woman lured them in, like an enchantment. The metaphorical spell on Draco’s attention lasted only as long as her anonymity, because when the woman in the strappy backless top turned around…“Oh shite,” he said as Hermione Granger scanned the occupants of the room.Draco watched her eyes fixate on every person at the bar… assessing, inhaling… sniffing out… searching for something… too wound up, too focused on her own needs to appreciate her blatant lack of decorum. Through his own foggy brain, he noticed what she didn’t, how the muscled man with a hawkish nose rose from his stool and headed her way. How the stringy lad from the opposite corner got out of his chair and moved towards her, too. Both looked hungry and unwilling to share.Scraping the leftovers of a high-profile Ministry employee off the floor wasn’t Draco’s idea of a pleasant nightcap. He threw his cards face down onto the table and stood. “I fold.”“Hey, you can’t leave now!” The first complaint raised more objections from around the table. “You promised us a show” and “We want to see how this plays out” rang in his ears.Draco was sure he’d said something stupid, ah, several stupid somethings in the last thirty minutes in front of these blokes, but his senses were starting to refocus.Threatening a bloodbath in his place of business would do that to a person.“You got the show you paid for. I drank the potion. It’s been thirty minutes, and I’m fine, see? Anyone who wants a hit can come by tomorrow and purchase their own dose. It’s entirely non-lethal. And the colors are amazing!”No one would purchase the potion for the colors. They wanted an indescribable high without the nasty side effects. And if he walked out of the room on his own two feet, it would prove that the potion was safe.Joke was on them. None of Draco Malfoy’s potions were safe. Or healthy. Mind-altering potions worked the same as gravity. The inevitable plummet back to earth always chased away the initial ride to the top of the world, but they could experience the entire experience for themselves.After they paid for it.He shoved the coins stacked on his side of the table into the center as an apology. “Good evening, gentlemen. May the best man win. Excuse me.”His feet were surprisingly steady. Mmm… that should be noted as a selling-point for the product. When hyped up on a mind-altering potion in the middle of a card game with dangerous, high stakes clients, mobility was a plus.More dangerous than these blokes would be the Ministry shutting the whole place down if one of their own ended up dead tonight. The urgency of the matter hardened his potion-induced afterglow and made him move faster.Draco watched his target as he closed the space between them. Was she… yes, she was leering back at another man at the bar… the wrong man… ah, shite. They were all the wrong men. Half-turned vampires were an enticing treat, he’d heard. He ordinarily wouldn’t care, but these men would eat her alive. Literally.Luckily, he stepped in front of her before she collided with any of them. Her upper lip was curled, and her pupils had almost blocked out the color in her eyes.Draco put his arm around her and steered her towards the back hallway. “I wasn’t expecting you back here.”That was a lie. He knew she’d be back, just not so soon. And not with such poor timing.Hermione’s gaze broke from the man at the bar, and she shook herself free of Draco’s arm. Wide-eyed, she looked at him, and then back to the bar, suddenly realizing what she should have caught on to before she started making eyes at the dark men.“Malfoy? What… What in Merlin's name is wrong with me?”Draco wondered what the hell was wrong with himself when he felt his own unwanted reaction to her wild eyes and let’s-not-hide-my-intentions outfit. His gaze shifted across the room at the card game he’d abandoned. They were angry, discussing amongst themselves. This would be bad for him. But it might be worth it after he dealt with her. The last time she had walked into the bar, she’d hidden gold in all sorts of interesting places. He wondered where it would be stashed this time.“I’ll write your dirty laundry list after we get you out of sight,” he drawled, staring at a small drop of drool that had gathered at the side of her mouth.Enigma. That’s what he faced. The Golden Girl of the wizarding world begged him to help her—or rather that’s how he’d spin it in his head over drinks with the blokes later. She was clearly under the effects of a potion, or falling off the potion—his potion, specifically, from earlier that day. To be fair, so was he.She was aware now. Aware of the danger. Aware of him. But like all of his clients, Draco needed her to go willingly.“Alright?” he asked, leading her as casually as he could muster to the back of the pub.Hermione allowed him to take her arm, still aware. Still skittish. But then her eyes refocused on him. She inhaled, and her irises disappeared completely.“I will be,” she said.Draco picked up his pace, leading Hermione farther from Muscles and the Scrawny kid, who had disappointment etched into their faces. Thankfully, they succumbed to the lure of a fresh round of foamy mugs slung at them from the barkeep, who had Draco pinned down with his own unwavering gaze.That was going to be another issue. For later.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Back in his office, Draco stood a safe distance away, discreetly training his wand under his sleeve on Hermione’s wild, wary pacing.“Are you going to buy something, or not?”Draco wasn’t on top of his game—but he had a shitload of practice in making deals with desperate people. Push the sale. Give them a deadline.He winced as Hermione took a beeline for his stash in the large cabinet, knowing better than to step in between a starving half-vampire and their next meal. She rummaged through an assortment of strange items until she found the blood bags. She selected one and held it up in the light. Then she gave it a good sniff and let out a contented sigh.A thrilling shiver went through him as she licked the side of the bag. She was about to tear into it with her teeth, but then she caught herself in the mirror's reflection against the side wall. She stared at herself long and hard, like a succubus caught in the act, and slowly lowered the bag from her face.Draco held his inner reactions in check and put on his best poker face as she turned to face him full on.“Does this make me one of your clients?” she asked.“Desperation pays my bills. How much did you bring?”He felt his cordiality expiring as unnamed side effects of his experimental potion cued up to make their presence known. Losing control with the underbelly of London was one thing. Debasing himself in front of a Ministry employee, well, that was reckless, too. But Draco was at the end of his rope. On the bright side, he wouldn’t be putting on a show for the entire pub.“What is wrong with me?” she repeated, wearing a worry-path on the priceless oriental rug. She still had the bag in her hands, but it was farther away from her face, as if she were trying to convince herself that she didn’t need it.“I keep asking myself the same thing,” he said. “What’s so special about me that I get to go on living when I’ve done all this horrible shite. Why is my life more valuable than everyone else's?”Ah, yes. Over sharing. He should make a note of that.His gaze shifted back to the bag in her hand. “You’re buying that, aren’t you?” The smirk was thick in his tone. Interesting.“Because if not,” he said, suddenly harsher, “then get out.”Oookay… mood swings, check.Hermione stopped her pacing. Her mouth was literally salivating as she continued to resist the pull of the contents of the bag. Her voice came out in a stutter, as if her control was on its last legs as well. “Is money all you care about?”Was it? If he had all of his faculties, his verbal sparring would be on a much higher level with this woman, but even his sluggish brain took notice that something significant had changed since he’d seen her last time. Hermione was resisting her urges far better than the average half-turned mess, and Draco had serviced a surprising number of them over the last few weeks, which had been a great profit to his bottom line. The one thing they couldn’t resist was a pull to satisfy their most basic urges.Hey, Draco had urges too, and right now, he was losing care about who Hermione Granger worked for or who her friends were. She was on a large, corporate payroll. Which meant he could exploit the funds given to her in his name.Or… Draco tried to rub his brain cells together enough to form a plan. Options, options… What else had he got? He could get that guileless reporter from The Prophet, Skeeter, in here. She could take photographs and, with Granger in that bite-me outfit, make a killer blackmail deal. Skeeter was on one of Draco’s products too—she’d be willing to make a sweet deal out of it.Yeah, life was like a decomposing ghoul with the Transylvanian Flu, and then one day, you just weren’t strong enough to rattle your chains anymore. Or in his case, he recovered sufficiently to suffer another day. Draco could endure the pain of survival, as long as the profit margin was wide enough.So how could he keep Granger occupied long enough to contact Skeeter?Hermione didn't seem to care about Ministry protocol either, or maybe she was too single-minded to pay attention. “It’s hot in here,” she said, rubbing a hand down the front of her neck.“Yeah,” he agreed, loosening his tie and undoing his top three buttons. Warm under the collar went on the mental list. Warm in other places too... This was something to pay attention to.“Burns said I have little time. I hate being rushed, but I’m so starved I can’t think straight anymore. Last time you gave me something that made my magic come back, and this smells different.. I just… I liked how that felt. I want to feel it again.”“I don’t know a Burns, personally. Maybe you could introduce me. What is he? Wizard? Vampire? Is he the one stringing you along?”“No one’s stringing me along.”She was lying. Or someone hadn’t given her the whole story. He didn’t feel any obligation to do the honors, but it would be a crime if the great Hermione Granger went down not even realizing…“Surely you know what happened to you.”“He said it’s reversible. I’m working on it.” Beads of sweat appeared on her unusually radiant skin. If he was close enough to her, he could do something about that… lick it off her, perhaps? His pants began to feel snug, and he tried (and probably failed) to be discreet about loosening his belt buckle.“As if they’re going to cooperate with you. They’re going to take what they want, when they want it, and it won’t be on your terms. All you can do is hold on to what you have, and hope for the best. You’re here because I have something that can give you a temporary reprieve from your inevitable doom. Sometimes, that’s all you can hope for. As long as you’ve got the gold, we can keep talking.” He’d given this spiel before, all of it true. Draco almost felt bad for treating her like a common bloodsucker… but not enough to stop the show.She held the bag up, apparently tired of pacing around with it. “How much?”“Ah,” he said, back to business. “Double last time.”“Double! That’s insane!” she cried. “It’s not even the same!”Her anger amused him on several levels. And aroused him even more. “I don’t think you’re in a bargaining position. So, you’ve got to ask yourself how hungry you are, and what you are willing to pay to end your misery.”He watched with great interest as she shoved a hand into the pocket of her jeans.“I am absolutely famished,” she said, slamming down the coins she’d retrieved onto his desk.That was too easy. He could have tripled the price. But no matter, the barkeep would get a good chunk from this transaction.Hermione held up the bag. “Maybe once this would have made me feel bad, but I’m having a hard time feeling anything right now.” She tipped the bag up and bit into it.He could tell by the way her pupils blocked out all the color in her eyes that she was lying again. She was feeling all kinds of things. Once she left, he could get in a good one with himself, get all slap happy if he needed to. Or...“I could help with that,” he said as his zipper pressed unbearably against his groin. He wasn’t above the occasional intimate request from his clients to fill the emptiness inside them after they fed.Hermione dropped the empty bag on the rug and flexed her fingers. “Why isn’t it happening?” she asked, staring hard at her fingers. She rubbed her fingertips together, then whirled on Draco.“Where is the other stuff?” she demanded, baring her teeth at him.Before he could react, she was back in the cabinet, tossing things aside. Draco winced as a box of empty bottles clinked as they hit the Persian rug.She whirled around again, following her nose to the box under Draco’s desk. Inside, Draco died a little as she began upending the small doses of his new stash into her mouth, licking the drops that spilled onto her chin.“This,” she said, holding the potion in front of her, “is helping.”That potion cost way more than the coins she had slapped onto his desk. But in this case, money didn’t matter. What mattered was that she had just burned through his new supply, which was going to take him more time. More blood. More carbs. How much cake was still in the cooler? At this rate, he’d have to order out for steak.But also, this meant that her manic pilfering was almost over. Draco made his way slowly to the cabinet, forming a plan.If she used the animal blood as a chaser to his mix, her cravings would cease for a whole day. He could appeal to her human side and tell her that she could resist this madness if she wanted to. Clearly she didn’t want to, but he was told that he could be quite persuasive.He dug around in his cabinet and pulled out more of the same blood bags. Cow. Pig. Not tasty, but they would continue to clear her head. Maybe even prod her to leave once she’d come down from the numbing high.So he’d heard.Hermione made a soft mewling sound as she finished off the potion that made him harden so fast that he’d probably end up with zipper imprints. That wasn’t a reaction he needed right now.He considered taking a dose of the Everclear on his desk to remind himself of all the ways Granger had not been appealing once upon a time. Then, maybe his body would calm the fuck down, because hot and bothered looked really, really good on her. It was probably the potion. Maybe it was only partly the potion. No, it had to be just a side effect. But then, did he really want to find out which part of his brain was telling the truth?Besides, she was about to pass out from the sedative. In a minute or two, she’d become a harmless lump on the floor. Draco collected the blood bags and closed the cabinet, locking it this time. A soft rustling sound behind him made him smile. There it was, she was going down.He turned around just in time to see Hermione Granger climbing over the ottoman towards him.“It’s not enough,” she whined as she got back to her feet. As if climbing over furniture was just as acceptable as walking around it. “I can’t feel it.”Draco’s scrambled brain reeled. Then he realized those bottles were only half full… because he hadn’t finished the formula. The sleepy additive hadn’t been added yet. Which meant…He backed up, bumping against the closed cabinet as she approached him. Her eyes burned with need. A finger traced along the veins in her own neck, as if she could follow the mixture entering her system. He watched her trail down between her cleavage, the spreading of her hand along her midsection, making its way lower.His eyes took in everything, and then traced all the way back up to her face—where her fangs descended and gleamed in the flickering light. Her smile transformed into a grimace. Her voice became a snarl.“I need more.”Draco’s pulse slammed through his body like tiny, synchronized bludgers. Even in his altered state, with the potion’s side-effects coursing through his veins, he was hyper aware of two things:Hermione Granger was hot.And in the next few minutes, if he didn’t give her exactly what she wanted, she was probably going to kill him.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Somewhere, in the back of Hermione’s head, a small part of her had curled up in mortification at the way she had dressed and how she had acted so brazenly towards those men in the pub. And no, her half-knut of decency wasn’t entirely deceased, because it shriveled up into an even smaller, cringeworthy type of currency as words kept tumbling out of her mouth.“I just had it in me, and now it’s gone.”Draco’s cheek twitched as she breathed in his scent, like a favorite cologne… if she liked cologne… Did she? Why was the scent of Draco Malfoy so distracting?Yes. Oh, yes. The magic. The larger, and more present part of her had dipped from a short-lived sense of satisfaction down to a jittery level of almost-but-not-quite and where-is-the-rest-of-it disappointment. She put the self-doubting voice within her into a time-out and tapped her thumb to her forefinger. There was work to be done. Magic to reclaim. She took aim, but the current of energy running through her wasn’t enough to zap a quill off the writing desk. “What happened? Why can’t I feel it anymore?”“I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Vampires are sated for a week after feeding. But since you’re not exactly…”Hermione’s tongue ran over her long incisors, getting a feel for the new shape in her mouth. She watched Draco’s throat as he swallowed whatever unhelpful words he was going to add. Her gaze shifted to the bag in his hands. “Is that going to make me feel better?”“This is it. This is all I’ve got.” He shuffled around her, putting some distance between them.Hermione’s body hummed with the fresh energy from a mouth-watering appetizer, while her instincts sought the rest of the banquet. Smells and sensations came at her from all directions, not at all familiar, but very natural. Primal, even. She followed him across the office and snatched up his wrist, inhaling the scent of the bag. “What’s this?”It smelled nothing like the little clinky bottles scattered on the rug. Those hadn't even had enough in them to generate the spark like before. Hermione appraised Draco as she held his arm captive, noting the hardness below his belt. Interesting, but that wasn’t what she was after. Whatever she needed, it was on him somewhere, and she was determined to find it.“Need to get you properly fed,” he said, untangling himself from her hold. “Then you can be on your way.” He held the blood bag between them like a shield. “This,” he said. “You need it to get filled up.”The bag smelled of death.“I am all for filling up,” she said, catching the tantalizing scent in the air, again. It was close. So very close. One shove from her surprising strength had him sinking into the couch. She wasted no time in climbing on top of him and inhaling deeply.Draco smelled delicious.The rational voice that had been actively protesting everything she’d done since she walked into the pub faded into an indecipherable whisper. If she’d made a fool of herself, dressing like a harlot and putting on a show for those men in the pub, it meant nothing. All of that had led to her getting to this place, with the one thing she had been searching for right underneath her.Hermione’s eyes glazed over, losing focus. Lost in the scent of her cravings.“Look, we can also…” Draco grabbed her hips and ground into her.“Mmm, or I can just…” Hermione grabbed the bag off Draco’s chest and tossed it aside. He felt delicious against her right there, too, but the smell was too enticing to sidetrack her from her prize.The thing that she craved was inside Draco Malfoy. She needed to get inside him.Barely registering what she was about to do, she grabbed his shoulders and sank her teeth into his neck.He tensed under her, but Hermione was too preoccupied with the hot liquid coating her tongue, sliding down her throat to notice anything about Draco Malfoy. She sucked in, forgetting everything except his delicate pulse dancing underneath her fingertips. And there it was, the undercurrent of power that she’d felt before, coursing through her body, filling the emptiness and making her whole again.It didn’t entirely feel like her own magic. This was warmer, slicker, more heady and concentrated than what she remembered. It bubbled within her, ready to do her bidding. It urged her to act on pure, unrestrained impulse without consideration or consequence.Under her, Draco muttered something about vampires not wielding magic. Something about being dangerous. Out of control. Something something, vampires, something, not trained to wield the power...Hermione Granger, the witch who was, knew exactly how to wield it.All she had to do was think about the small potion bottles flying against the back wall and shattering against each other on the ground. She could clearly imagine the ottoman making lazy circles in the middle of the floor and picture in vivid detail the way Draco’s potions robe would flap around the office like a giant bat with rabies.Each sip transformed into a small demonstration of her newly regained power. Every one of her tiny experiments received the absolute highest marks. Outstanding wordless, wandless spells went off all around her.When she pulled away, Hermione tapped her thumb to her forefinger and watched as sparks flew from the contact. The sensation was astounding, how good and right it felt to affect things. To control things like this again.This was what she had come for. Finally, her most desperate dream was coming true.Draco stared, wide-eyed at her. Not with wonder. Fear, maybe? She didn’t mind a healthy amount of fear. Anything was better than apathy. Or worse, pity.“Watch this!” She thought about the quill on the desk dancing a jig, and it happened. “Lumos,” she murmured, making the gold thread on the velvet tapestry glow. “Expecto patronum,” she said in wonder, as a luminescent otter appeared and began swimming frantic circles near the ceiling.She had her magic back.Draco looked even more wary as she continued converting his office into chaos. “Err, Granger?”Ignoring the man under her, she summoned fireflies until they filled the air, laughing at the way the otter batted them around. As they bumped against each other, they emitted brief flashes of light, sparking the way her fingers had when she rubbed them together.All too soon, the robe sank to the floor. The ottoman stilled. The fireflies sparked out of existence.The light inside her dimmed, and her body’s power drained away, like it was seeping out of a leaky cauldron.No. No no no no… why was it going away?She squirmed over Draco’s lap and latched back onto his neck, taking a pull from his vein again until she felt the resurgence within her.Yes.In her periphery, Hermione saw the dancing flames of the dragon head lamps, felt the burning within, and became one with the fire. Once again, wordless magic flowed from her into the flames, shooting them up, higher, higher, until the ceiling began smoking.Yes yes yes. It was all coming back to her now.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Ten minutes later, Draco stood, a desperate man, in front of the potted plant again, working himself over in time to the refrain of his addled senses.What the fuck… fuck… fuck…Draco spurted his release into the pot. The plant wordlessly took his abuse just like it had last time. He zipped up, slammed the back door shut, and reached for the potion on his desk. Without thinking, he threw it back like a shot.Everclear. Craziest concoction he’d ever developed. Not too long after the war ended, he’d needed something to cancel out the mind-altering side-effects of his experimental potions. Seeing as he had developed quite the collection of questionable and addictive mixtures, it had become his most useful creation.He inhaled through his nose and counted slowly… One, two… and everything became crystal…If there was a potion to cancel out coherent thought, Draco would take that one right now, because reality had never looked so dire.Using the wall to steady himself, he reached for the cabinet, intending to take a blood replenishing potion chaser, but the room swayed perilously. Draco plummeted into his chair. He just needed a minute, here. Or three.Granger left as soon as she had finished… feeding on him? Wrecking his office with random shite spells?Wait. He looked around wildly. She was gone, wasn’t she?The ceiling had stopped smoking, but the char marks from the light show on his tapestry was going to cost him. Puddles were eating watermarks into the mahogany finish of his desk. Potion bottles lay in a smashed pile of shards on the floor.Shite, those broken bottles were going to put his production even farther behind schedule.What the fucking furnuculus had gotten into Hermione Granger, turning his office into a bloody mosh pit in the middle of a Weird Sisters live concert? At this rate, he could rent out the room for a photo shoot of the Spring Break edition of Witches Gone Wild: The Afterparty, and make a small fortune.After the room stopped moving, or his vertigo calmed down (shite-shoveling sickles, his anemia couldn’t tell the difference!), Draco stumbled back into the pub. Only a few customers remained hidden in the dark recesses, nursing their drinks to make the night last longer. The poker game had long since broken up, leaving stale pretzels in its wake.Muscles and Stringy Lad were also gone, probably off somewhere having someone else for dinner.Draco thought about what he needed right now. Rest. Food. A sedative.Gringotts-level security.He sat down heavily onto a bar stool and reached into his pocket to down a blood replenishing potion. Good thing he was sitting, because the rush would have knocked him flat on his arse. He was going to need three more of those before the night was through.“When did you start entertaining Ministry personnel?”Draco jumped at the unexpected voice of the barkeep. Looking back on all the seedy, questionable people that he had ever encountered in his life, the man was definitely in the top three of most terrifying people he’d ever met.A brandy glass appeared in front of him, half-filled with a pale, amber liquid. Draco tapped the bar twice, giving the ale a hard pass. Straight alcohol in his veins right now would put him down for longer than he could afford to recover… possibly he was already down for the count, but he wasn’t going to exacerbate the situation.The barkeep shrugged, unfazed by the rejection, and reached under the bar to concoct something else.Voldemort would have been twice the nightmare if he served his own drinks.A second glass appeared next to the first, this one a darker liquid, poured over ice. With cream on top. And a straw.That was more like it. Draco sucked down the iced beverage like the starving man that he was. Sugar and caffeine zipped through his system, waking up his idle brain, making him even more aware of the shite into which he’d just fallen and rolled around.This was not good.He’d almost offered himself to Hermione Bloody Granger.Actually, he would like to forget that part.She’d taken the other part of him instead, leaving him with a hard-on and a headrush. And a trashed office. He had no idea what the purpose of the magical light show was back there, but it seemed to be important to her.The recreational potion had finally worn off… or maybe that was the immediate effects of the Everclear. It wasn’t like Draco to be so sloppy as to lose track of whatever he was dosing himself with. Before he could use whatever brain power the iced bourbon coffee had recovered to retrace his self-medicating schedule, the barkeep slammed The Daily Prophet in front of him.GREENGRASS ENGAGEMENT PARTY COMBINES THE GLAMOURED WITH THE ENAMOREDDraco stared at the headlines that made him want to cry. If he had done a better job of keeping his private life private, he might not be in this mess of an existence. “Why are you showing me this now?” he almost whined.The barkeep almost growled at him. “It’s her sister, you harpy. And no one cares about your degenerate love life.” He flipped the Greengrass engagement notice over to the section of the paper titled, “Wizengamot Reporter”, featuring a half-page spread with the headline “Granger…”Draco set down his glass, refusing to read any more. “I saw that one this morning.”“Not this. It’s the Evening Edition.”He stared down at the barkeep’s meaty finger pointing to a new set of headlines.GRANGER IN DANGER? SECRET SOURCE REVEALS CONFIDENTIAL THREAT OF SUSPENSION.What the literal fuck was that?“Thought you should know who you’re dealing with,” the barkeep said.She was a crazy witch. She was tanking her career. And she had chosen him as her supplier.Bloody Ministry people.Like one poor decision after another, they just kept coming at him, didn’t they?A piece of cake appeared next to the paper, along with the start of a lecture Draco did not want to listen to.“That woman is with the Ministry of Magic.”No shite.
“I didn’t ask for her. They sent her as my new contact. I thought if I gave her everything, she’d go away. But naturally, my life isn’t cut out to get a break like that.” Draco sucked hard on the straw until he was pulling ice chunks from the bottom of his glass.“You gave her the entire file? Everything?”“I’m not a complete dung beetle. I copied it first.”“We don’t need someone like that showing her face in this place.”Draco almost choked on a mouthful of cake at the barkeep’s use of the word “we”. Since when was he allowed to make any actual decisions around here?“You shouldn’t…”The sack of Galleons clunking onto the bar stopped the barkeep from telling Draco any more of what he should and shouldn’t be doing. “Here’s what ‘someone like that’ gave me.”The barkeep swiped the coins away and gave him a hard stare. “Use the back door next time.”Next time.Draco draped his body over the bar, limp as a wet mop. His hand could barely shovel forkfuls of carbs into his mouth.The thought crossed his mind that maybe next time might be more fun if he gave up any pretenses and gave in to whatever. Yeah, the potion had started it, but it had become clear that after a while, his body had responded eagerly all on its own. He wasn’t entirely sure that she would want anything more than his blood, but he hadn’t put it on the table, or offered it to her in any direct manner, had he?What if he did? The way she looked. The way she moved. The way his body reacted, which it might even without the potion. If he could forget who her employer was for an evening, it was guaranteed to be a good time.A good time to forget the past. A good way to forget that he even owned a bloody bludgeoned mess of a heart.It was obvious she would be back. Obviously, because why wouldn’t she be? He might as well get whatever he could out of the experience and tack on an additional cleaning fee to her bill.But seriously.Could he survive a next time?
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Hermione sat at her kitchen island for most of the night and into the morning, feeling the buzzing in her veins until it was time to leave for work. The hum in her system came on strong as she slipped the coin in the slot, surging just at the right moment when she grabbed the chain and pulled.Flushing herself down a toilet had never felt so fantastic.The atrium air hung quietly around her as she walked to the lifts, wrapped up in her Ministry robe like it defined her. And actually, for the past year, as she secretly battled against her lost magic, it had been the one thing she held like a shield between herself and the rest of the Wizarding World. The long, black garment with the emblazoned “M” told everyone who saw her she was still here. She was still valid.I’m still me.Today, she was tempted to do more than just wear the symbol of her identity. Tempted to Accio her mug again. Tempted to summon the Quick-Quotes-Quill to respond to the werewolf faction that had sent a worried correspondence regarding next week’s vote after the Daily Prophet articles ran.But she remembered how quickly the magic had faded when she’d spent it with too much abandon. Instead, she wrote out by hand the assurances that the Ministry as a whole still supported the werewolf rights bill and tapped Henry’s airplane charm, sending it without the magic she had inside of her. Hermione toyed with a single chip in the fish ‘n chips basket that she’d allowed Henry to order for her, feeling the power through her hand… Imagining all the things she could do to the grease and batter. She held herself back from giving in to the urge to see it all burn, remembering the crash that would come after.She would do anything to never feel that emptiness again.“I was going to just send the report, but you said you wanted to know as soon as possible, so I thought I’d…”Hermione’s head jerked up, startling Neville in her doorway. He stopped talking, his mouth still open from the unfinished words.“You can come into my office, Neville,” she said. “You don’t have to hover at the door.”He clamped his mouth shut and sat down in her visitor’s chair. “I meant…” Neville shook his head. “Hello, Hermione. Sorry, I should have led with that.”He set a report on her desk. Hermione stared at the words that made absolutely no sense to her. Not after everything she’d been through.No trace of inhabitants.“Are you sure?”Nevillie listed his activities on his fingers. “I took a team, just like you requested. Verified the address twice. That warehouse at the docks is empty. Our team used every revealing spell in our arsenal. There was nothing, except for this.”Hermione stared at the palm-sized pepper spray tube in Neville’s hand. Her pepper spray from the night of the attack.“Obviously, it’s a Muggle item. I ran the tests, and there’s nothing magical about it.”Just like me.Hermione’s finger tapped against her thumb under the desk, inviting the comforting spark to come to life.Or how I used to be.“Hermione.”Her head snapped up. “Yes?”“Are you alright?”“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?” Hermione said, shaking her thoughts away from fangs and falling.“It’s just, you look different from yesterday. More…” Neville shook his head again. “Just, more.” He looked like he was going to add… more… but then thought better of it. “Anyway, I’ll send another team out later this afternoon, just in case we missed something, but I don’t think we did.”Hermione stilled her fingers and nodded. “Thank you, Neville,” she said. And then, “Have you heard anything about your friend?”Neville’s face fell, and Hermione almost regretted asking about the woman on the break room announcement.“Nothing yet,” he said. “She hasn’t been back to her flat in a week. I don’t know what…” He pressed his mouth into a line as if he was struggling to keep himself in check.He was doing the same thing she did when she found herself getting upset these days. Big emotions weren’t shared anymore. Not after the war. They used to just let it all hang out. Cry. Yell. Allow what they were feeling on the inside to pour out all over the place. But the war had subdued them. Everyone was tired of being sad or disappointed or worrying that the worst was about to happen, because it already had. Bad things happened to undeserving victims, and everyone just hoped that they, or someone close to them wasn’t the next in line.Except bad things had never stopped happening to Hermione. It was as if the war had poisoned everything left of her life.She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Neville. I’m sure we will hear something soon.” Then she added, “You’re a good friend.” because it seemed like the right thing to say.“Any time.”Neville took his leave, and Hermione stared at the disappointing report he’d left on her desk. She had hoped that an Auror Team would have found traces of something that would point to who or what might use that space as a drop point for Malfoy’s deliveries. If she had given Neville a clue… but then she couldn’t tell him she was looking for evidence of an active vampire nest. Otherwise, there would be uncomfortable questions that she was unprepared to answer.She took a brief break to exit the Ministry building and place a call at the nearest red kiosk, leaving three more messages on Metzker’s machine. For the rest of the day, she kept the little plastic box on her desk, but the pager continued to lay silent as the dead.All day, her boss’s office remained dark. Thank Merlin for small favors, because what would she say if she had to face him after everything she’d been through in the last twenty-four hours. Thanks to Henry putting the Daily Prophet on her chair, Hermione didn’t have to wonder what Gringus Alabastor had been up to. The paper’s latest headline described how in her untimely absence, her boss had squashed the ‘Pixie Crusade’ before it ever got off the ground. Angry readers had rallied against his interference in the Public Opinion Poll, and popular opinion in Letter to the Editor declared pushback against Alabastor’s latest announcement to redirect the Department away from a ‘catalyst for change’ and more towards a ‘champion for the status quo’. No one (at least no one at The Prophet) had anything good to say about Gringus Alabaster and his closed-minded agendas.“Here’s hoping that Alabastor Gringus continues to make a fool of himself somewhere out there without us,” Henry muttered. “By the way, you never said how your meeting went yesterday.”No, and she wouldn’t have anything to say about it now, either. “Don’t worry about me, Henry,” Hermione told him. “Things went as well as they could have.”Her words were supposed to ease his guilt for not being able to help. But was it true? Was drinking blood an indication that anything was well in her world?Straightening out the papers on her desk in the glow of the late afternoon, Hermione made both physical and mental notes of what she needed to accomplish next. She smoothed out the crumpled note and stuffed the mysterious demand from the rogue group inside Draco Malfoy’s file. On a whim, Hermione pulled out the Portkey acquisition paperwork and stared at it. She’d done this for others before. Werewolves who needed a haven away from their oppressors. House-elves who were requesting distance from their former masters.Hermione took pause. This was what that vampire, Burns, had told her she shouldn’t do. But without a bribe, what grounds did she have for bargaining with them? According to the vampire from the Council, her life… no, her very existence was at stake here. She pushed the acquisition work to the edge of her desk, deciding that it would be a tomorrow issue.Right now, she was starving.She took one last look at the cold and greasy fish basket before dumping it into the rubbish bin. Her thoughts raced straight to the Prickly Arse Pub and how she could take care of the ravenous feeling inside of her. But then those words tickled the back of her brain, that vampires were sated for a week after a proper feeding. Did that mean that she hadn’t fed properly?Her stomach turned over. Was she feeding, now, like some kind of animal?Hermione’s cheeks flamed with the memory of what she’d done in that back office. How she’d acted… how her body had reacted… Would Draco Malfoy know what a proper feeding entailed? Had he held back on her? If what she had experienced in that back office was him holding back, what in Merlin’s name was it supposed to be like if he didn’t?You need the blood, Hermione.She wasn’t with Ron anymore.And you did nothing with Malfoy… Not technically.Alright, even Hermione knew that was a lie. Drinking blood was not nothing. But her body could have done more, if she’d let it.Could it, though? She still cared about Ron as a person. One couldn’t be with another person for that many years and just stop caring, could one? Care or no care, if they were no longer together, she’d be free to see whomever she wanted.Do whatever to whomever…But that idea went both ways. So really…She tried to picture Ron with someone else… Right. Bad idea.She tried to picture Ron seeing her with Malfoy after what they’d done… Worse idea.Why was she even doing this to herself? Too many questions. Too much second-guessing. Too much… everything. Her mind batted the thoughts back and forth like a frantic badminton game, making her head pound with each volley.Way to go, Hermione. Now you’ve wrecked the moment.It was just…How long had it been since anyone had looked at her like Malfoy… Draco… (He had a first name, Hermione) had looked at her… not in that panicked, “I might die in the next few minutes” trance state… but that other look, before she’d taken what she needed.He was hungry for you. He was weak. He was also willing.Was she… willing? She was worth more than someone’s pity. She was better than someone’s obligation. What would it be like to feel something again?
***
When she walked into the pub that night, she was still wearing her Ministry robe. Draco was also in some kind of dark robe, sitting at the bar this time. He looked up and saw her, wordlessly abandoned his drink at the bar, and brought her straight into his office.Hermione put the sack of Galleons on his desk next to a rack of potions that he didn’t even try to conceal.He had more color in his complexion when he gave her a blood bag. They still smelled like death, but also a little like him, so she took it and drank it and let the calm flow through her veins.“Better?” he asked, all professional.She nodded. “Better.” But she didn’t leave, too mesmerized by the sound of his pulse thundering in his veins.He shrugged off his robe and threw it over the back of the chair. He looked at her curiously, and then turned his back on her, retrieving something from the cabinet.Maybe he was dosing up on something again. Maybe he was dosing down. Maybe he didn’t even care who she was or why she’d come back and it was all about the money.She had the money, just like last time. More, in fact. There was no reason to skimp on her expenses, not when her life was on the line. But she should resist this, right? Because it was Draco Malfoy. Because she didn’t want him that way. Because she didn’t feel things?Oh, but her body was more truthful than her conscience, feeling all sorts of things.This was the time that she should voice objections. Tell Draco to stop looking so much like her favorite snack… but really, the willingness was only in his eyes. The rest of him was so calm, like this sort of thing happened with him every day. Like he had people in here asking him for things that he needed a closed door to deliver.Hermione’s eyes darted to the door and back to Draco. He nodded slightly and closed it.Oh. Oh, alright. Maybe this was normal for him.Did she care? Should she have any reason to care? Or should she ignore her big brain and let her instincts lead her into whatever this encounter was turning into?Draco pulled out another blood bag. “I don’t know what you had in mind for this evening, but I’d like to be alive in the morning. Take another.”Her body reacted to his words before she had a chance to really hear them and instantly took the bag. Draco’s eyes never left her as she sucked it dry in half the time of the first, fisting the plastic shell like an empty Cauldron Cake wrapper. Her insides grew warm, and it had nothing to do with the empty blood bag in her hand.What did she have in mind for this evening? What did he have in mind? All he was doing was looking at her. Had she ever reacted that way to anyone like that? Even with Ron…Merlin’s bones, she was still wearing her Ministry robe! Why was she even thinking about doing… anything with Draco Malfoy?Draco put two stoppered vials on the desk, seeming to read her hesitation as an unspoken question. “I’m not on anything right now, except for a heavy dose of caffeine and blood replenishing potions. Just in case, this will clear your head after.”Her body was already leaning towards his. She marveled at the way her mouth watered for another taste of him. The way other parts of her begged for their own taste.“After what?” she wanted to know.She needed nothing else. She’d already gotten what she’d come for. He’d already given her the bags. The door was unlocked. She could just walk out and go home. No one in her empty flat would look at her with those smoldering eyes. No one would remind her of what she almost did last time she was in this room with this man. She was existing just fine on her own.Hermione was so tired of just existing.“Whatever you want.”What do you want, Hermione Granger?Hermione took off her robe.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Hermione’s body thrummed with a heady sense of contentment, as if she’d gone to sleep missing her kneazle and woken up to it purring in her lap. She flexed and twisted her arms, marveling at how perfectly her two fully functional appendages worked. There would be no more hiding under starched blouses or tweed coats.Hands were beautiful, remarkable things.She stretched lazily, feeling the warmth roll off of her like a fallen pillow and vaguely remembered that Crookshanks was still at Ron’s. Now that everything was better, should she ask him to bring her pet over next time?Even though she felt like she could lie here for another long while, it was probably time to get up. Cracking an eye open, Hermione looked around for the clock, but all she saw were two dragon head lamps spouting low-burning flames, casting a hazy shadow over the room.Her toes dug into the plush carpet, and she stretched lazily, knocking her legs into the off-kilter ottoman. Yawning, Hermione gazed across the room at the large wall mirror, through which she saw the reflection of the ostentatious writing desk. Three stoppered potions sent a déjà vu through her system. Her hand reached for one, groggily remembering that they were supposed to be the obligatory chaser at the end of the evening. Shrugging, she downed it in one swig.Clarity shot through her veins, and reality settled around her like a wet blanket. This was not her room. She’d been lounging on a sofa in the back of the Hairy Arse Pub, after doing… things… with Draco Malfoy.Hermione shot up to a sitting position and stared at the two remaining bottles. Her eyes followed a dark smear running down the side of the desk, continuing along the arm of the couch where Draco was draped. His vacant stare froze Hermione like she’d been caught in the gaze of a gorgon.Oh, Merlin’s heavy hangover. Dead. He had to be dead.Dread seeped into her bones. She didn’t know what to do… Who to call… Did she even have a means of contacting Burns the Vampire at this point? He would know what to do, because he was one of them… she was like him…Would the Council kill her for this?Was she even alive?Alive, yes. Also, naked. So was he.“I’m sorry.”And now the naked corpse was apologizing.Hermione blinked back the sting of blame gathering at the edge of her vision. She had lost her humanity, and now she was losing her mind. Draco’s body started shaking, and she wondered if corpses could have a seizure, but then he started choking… or was that laughing?“Salazar’s bones, what a ride! Didn’t know you had it in you. You were.. You … so much… Past me should bleed out on the floor for everything I put you through… Present me is… haha, bleeding out on the posh sofa…”Hermione grabbed the face of the laughing corpse and turned his chin from side to side, checking where she’d left double puncture marks on either side of his neck. A brief flash of instinct prodded her to lick the incisions closed.No, she confirmed. He wasn’t even close to bleeding out. If Draco hadn’t shoved those bags of animal blood at her to take the edge off of her hunger before she’d started in on him, he might have lost a pint. Or three. As it stood, the color of his skin was still pink. She must have only had a taste, because the hum of magic wasn’t singing through her veins like last time.Draco might be a lot of things, but he was also a smart man.And now that the fog in her head had cleared, there was very little blood around the room. Smeared blood always looked like a lot more than it really was.Hermione caught sight of a version of herself in the large gilded frame, reflecting a wreck. A disaster. A very satisfied, very sated mess.“That was…” Draco was still babbling from the couch. “I had almost forgotten how to feel alive. Thanks for the reminder.”Oh, the clarity was a stinging hex, because she could recall everything now. Malfoy’s potions were good. The rest of him had been even better. All the things she did with… to… Draco Malfoy, and all the things he had done in return had felt like sin. She had been neither considerate, nor gentle, and she distinctly remembered throwing any semblance of propriety up the floo when she had Draco under her, took a heady sip from him, and then demanded that he…What if she lost control like this at the Ministry?What if she lost control like this with Ron?A cauldron of questions stirred inside Hermione’s head while Draco roused himself from the couch, testing his limbs, mumbling something about being alive and whole. Completely unconcerned about his clothes scattered around the room, he scooted to the edge of the couch and stared openly at her.“What?” she snapped, feeling like she could be out-of-control right this second.“How long was I out?” he asked.She could actually feel the tug in her gut, and Merlin, what was causing that tingling sensation? Apparently, her body was reacting to his blatant stare, as if it enjoyed the way he appreciated what he saw.“I don’t know,” she said with less of an edge. “I just took one of these, like you said.”“And you’re still here.”“What does that mean?” she snapped, feeling judged by the person on the Ministry’s informant list who ought to judge her the least… since he’d been complacent in everything that had just happened… and he was still naked. Neither one of them had made a move to reach for the scattered clothing around the room.Draco shrugged. “Not sure if you had anywhere to be, or if you’d want to...”Hermione’s face heated. She didn’t know where she should be, much less, what time it was, or even if she should want anything at all. “What are you asking?”She knew exactly what he was asking, but the logical… responsible part of her that had been silent throughout the whole exercise of… whatever they’d just done… insisted on adamantly denying any pleasure she’d derived from it.Hermione Granger, the sensible. Hermione Granger, the rational. Champion of the underdog. Responsible (partially) for saving the Wizarding World. A hero.Someone like her wouldn’t be standing naked in Draco Malfoy’s private office, considering a naked romp with a Ministry informant a good time and thinking about casting a Gemino spell on the experience.And yet, that’s exactly what she was doing.Who was she anymore?Draco lazily summoned a glass and waved his hand. “Aguamenti.” Then he took a long drink. When he was done, he set the glass down on the desk next to the remaining potion bottle and gave her a pointed look. “Seeing as you’re still here, the question stands. Do you want to be anywhere else?”Hermione wasn’t sure how to answer that, or even what the real question was. Draco got up and crossed the room to her. A small smear of blood on his neck, just below his ear, beckoned for her to lick it clean.He must have read her intention on her face, because he moved even closer until they were nose to nose, with no barrier between them. She should be nervous, or wary. She should be getting dressed and leaving. She should do a lot of things other than staring at the undressed man in front of her.Do something so you don’t look completely ridiculous.Hermione grabbed the other potion bottle from behind her on the desk and held it up to his face. “Did you need this?”“I’m good. And I see you’ve already taken one.” He took the bottle out of her grasp and reached around her waist to set it back on his desk next to the empty one. “Which means you can tell me what you really think.”“What exactly are you getting out of this?”She heard herself say it, but she didn’t know why it was any of her business, or if she wanted to know the answer. Why should she even care?Why wasn’t she leaving?“If you haven’t noticed, my life is shite right now. All sorts of people are using me for all sorts of things. This was the first time, in a long time, that I got anything out of it other than a head rush and a hangover.”Hermione tried to be insulted by the words, but he still smelled so good that her brain had a hard time processing exactly what was wrong about this situation. “That’s hardly a…compliment,” she managed, and then decided that letting herself breathe him in wasn’t the worst thing she’d done in her life.“I don’t think the Ministry gives out performance reviews for what we just did. You are very good at…” his eyes roamed over her, “a lot of surprising things. It almost made me forget what I was missing. If I close my eyes, I think I can feel it again.” He didn’t close his eyes. He stared right through her, moving his hands along her hips. “She had the most perfect…”Hermione gasped as her body pressed into his, sending a shiver through her. “This isn’t right,” she said with absolutely no fight behind the words. “This isn’t me.”“Ah, Granger, I think that’s just something we tell ourselves when we don’t want to bother rationalizing. Have you ever considered that the reasons we tell ourselves to resist the things we want are the same reasons that we should just give in?”Despite his fallacious argument, Draco’s hands were marvelous things, moving over her body, making her dizzy. Her senses relished the scent of him, no longer needing anything because her blood hummed already, simmering under her skin. It was like appreciating the lingering scent of the kitchen after a well-consumed meal.Her hands did their own exploration and felt him harden under her touch. There were no other expectations. No strings. No promises. She could leave right now, if she wanted to. Or, she could keep letting Draco press her back towards the couch, doing an expert job of softening her resolve to do the right thing and leave. Hermione Granger always did the right thing. She was sensible. Rational.“If you let me be on top this time, I promise to make it worth your while,” he said into her ear.The couch pressed into the back of her legs. Draco pressed against her shoulders, muttering something about brown eyes and smooth hair. Sensibly, he wasn’t talking about her. Rationally, he wanted someone else. But here she was, and his hands were on her, and it felt so good to feel good.Instinct urged her to turn off her screaming brain and tune in to her heightened senses, pressing skin against skin. Forgetting about guilt. Letting pleasure take over, all over again.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Draco woke to alarms blaring. Someone was crossing his barriers.The noise quickly died down, which meant that it might have been a false alarm, or some drunk goblin stumbling too close to the wards, which happened more frequently than he liked. Cool air filled his lungs as he watched Hermione’s bare body rise and fall on top of him. Yeah, this was a crossed barrier he hadn’t imagined. He was supposed to have been on top this time. For a short while, he had been, but she’d flipped positions and taken control again, and he decided he didn’t mind if she was determined to do all the heavy lifting.Daring to run a finger over her bare back, Draco watched for a sign that she was stirring. Sometimes, these blood-sucking types fell into a trance-like state after feeding, similar to sleeping, he guessed. He would never have imagined that Hermione Granger would have become one of them. She hadn’t minded the first, or the second time they’d gone at it. She probably wouldn’t mind him twisting his fingers through her hair. Lifting her head up ever so slightly, he peered into her face.She remained so still, as if she wasn’t breathing. Her eyes were closed. Her mouth slack. She hadn’t seemed to mind being the woman he didn’t want, she was nothing like her… but neither was she anything like the woman he thought he had known.The poster child of the Ministry of Magic had come to him, a pent up ball of frustration and need, and for a while, they’d both fallen into the same side of desperation. He could almost picture himself letting go of whatever was holding him to this place. If she survived the next few days… what if they… She had been so…Different hardly began to cover it.A handbag had spilled all over the plush rug, probably from their enthusiastic activities. Draco reached down and picked up the small plastic box with a silent screen. Metzker had one of these. She’d made Draco use the phonebox down the street to punch in numbers when her orders were ready. Wondering why Granger had one of these Muggle devices, he flipped it over in his hand and saw a series of numbers inked into the plastic. Obviously, this was her communication code. Muggle items were such clumsy…A new set of alarms went off, complete with flashing lights, causing him to fumble the pager. It fell back to the rug as he disentangled his other hand from her hair. “Oh, shite!” He shook Hermione’s arm. “We have to get out of here!”As her eyes fluttered open, he shoved one of the stray robes into her hands and took up another, throwing it over his head, not caring if the potions robe and Ministry robe were mixed up between them. The important part was that he was leading her briskly into the back room behind the office, fashioned for circumstances precisely like these. Draco flipped a lever that released the magical wards and opened the wall to the back alley.“You have to leave. They’re coming!”He avoided eye contact with the drooping plant in the corner. As soon as he thought they were in the clear, a group of shadows surrounded them.“Here’s a lovely bit of crumpet!” The shadow coalesced into a man with fangs who took no time to leer right into Hermione’s space. He inhaled deeply and let out a long sigh. “Feeding our special mix to a fresher?”Draco looked wildly at Hermione, who stared blankly at the vampire. The real, fully formed one. As in the deadly, bloodsucking, kill-you-in-an-instant kind.“I hope you left some for us.”Three more vampires made their presence known, making Draco’s level of panic rise to unexplored heights.“There’s a tray of biscuits back in the office,” he suggested. He didn’t have any potions. He barely had any blood-pressure. “German shortbread. Quite tasty. We could go back inside and…”The big man spat on the ground. “We didn’t come for your mother’s stale imports. We’ve come to collect what’s due.”Oh, right. This was the part when he was going to admit that someone else had consumed the product for which they’d paid him in advance. He’d already paid the barkeep, so he couldn’t give the money back even if he wanted to.The vampire saw the royally screwed situation written all over his face. Fangs dropped.“Malfoy, you little snit. We promised the boss we’d come down here and pick up the order. Now you’ve gone and made us liars.”“Strange that you lot would be bothered with such a minor offense as lying.” Draco tried to think on his feet, reaching into the nothingness of the world for a lifeline, any stray thought that might get him out of this situation.As always, the world had nothing good to give him.If Draco hadn’t been having this exact recurring nightmare of his death at the hands of his enemies every night for as long as he could remember, he would have been terrified. Somehow, the repetition had taken the edge off. Now, it just seemed inevitable.He glanced over at Hermione, surrounded by six fully formed and angry vampires. What could he do, except count the scars he had to prove how unmatched he was against these creatures?For all of Merlin’s gold, why hadn’t she apparated away?One of the group grabbed Hermione by the neck. Her feet dangled as the vampire showed her around to the rest of them. “Take a whiff, chaps. This is where our stash went. Got any ideas?”As they crowded around their prize, Draco did what he was best at. He found a small crevice in between the rubbish bin and the wall and stuffed himself into it. There was a lot of hissing and screaming and blood, and for a while, it didn’t matter whose it was as long as it wasn’t his. He squeezed his eyes tight until it was all over. Then the alley was silent as a grave.They would come for him next.Except as the long minutes ticked by, and his thighs cramped up from crouching so low, they didn’t.He had to crawl on his hands and knees to peek out from his hiding spot. At first, all he saw was a dark red pool taking advantage of the gradient in the ground to run like a stream towards the pub’s back entrance. He shakily got to his feet and stared down at his clients in a bloody heap of torn limbs. A stray piece of fabric fluttered down to the ground, the charred remains of a Ministry badge landing face up in a puddle of someone’s stomach bile.Hermione, covered in blood, turned to face him. In her eyes, a fire burned hot and bright.Draco had heard that vampires didn’t do magic. He’d heard that vampires were expressly forbidden to drink wizard blood. He’d never stopped to wonder why there were no wizard-vampires in the world.He was definitely wondering now. The woman standing in front of him looked like she could take down another army of vampires without breaking a sweat. Also, she looked barking mad.“Granger,” he said in as calm a voice he could muster, like he was talking down an angry hippogriff who had just had its prey removed from its cage before feeding time. “I don’t want to hurt you.”Only the wind responded, blowing her hair into a matted mess at the side of her head.“Stupefy.”Hermione blinked. Then she took a step towards him.“Incarcerus.”“Petrificus Totalus.”Two steps. Three.Draco fumbled with his hands and performed the movements for the Jelly-Legs-Jinx, but he could have been waving his arms and shouting at a mountain that had no legs to bind for all the effect he was having.Time to get creative.“Locomotor Mortis! Rictusempra! Levicorpus!”Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.“Expeliarmus!” he shouted as a desperate last-measure, which was stupid, because neither of them had wands.Hermione’s eyes glowed with an indistinguishable fire, as he backed into the wall. Her lips moved rapidly, even though no sound escaped them. A whirlwind picked up around them, her hair glowed. Her fingers glowed. She was covered in everyone’s blood but her own, and she was staring straight at him.Draco cast a shield charm around himself, scrambled around in his mind for the names of any powerful deities he’d heard about, and decided that now was a good time to learn how to pray.Suddenly, her feet stopped moving. The fire went out of her eyes. Her hands fell limply to her side. As she swayed in the light breeze around them, her face held all the disappointment of a Seeker whose snitch had flown out of her grasp and straight into the hand of her enemy.Then she hit the ground.If he bothered to look down, Draco might have found that he’d wet himself.“Well, shite.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The last time Hermione woke up in an unfamiliar place, she’d told herself that she didn’t have time to fall apart over things she couldn’t control. She’d faked being fine in front of Ron. She’d muddled her way through her job. All to prove to herself that she didn’t need anyone’s help, even if she didn’t remember what she’d done.But this time, squirming under harsh lighting and scratchy sheets, she remembered every limb she had torn away. Every vein she had punctured and sucked dry. Every moment of unleashing the borrowed magic inside of her to take down her enemies.The grip of madness had coiled around her throat. Unbridled power had played tricks upon her mind. Her stomach lurched with the incandescent recall of everything. Hermione tried to sit up, but she was too weak to lift herself off the bed.Panic crept in as she threw her head to the side so she could see exactly where she was. The St. Mungo’s crest was carved into the rocking chair next to her bed. The bright lettering of the Maladies Ward floated above a small table with a pitcher of water and an empty glass. A white robe shifted in front of her vision.“You lost a lot of blood.”A Mediwitch stood at her bedside, checking off things on a clipboard. Her placid face seemed vaguely familiar, but Hermione couldn’t recall where she’d seen her before.She watched the Mediwitch run her fingers along a set of tubes that connected a dark colored bag to a vein in Hermione’s wrist and blanched as it filled with red and slid towards her arm.“The blood replenishing potions weren’t working, so we’re trying a more direct approach.” Do you want me to call him in?”Hermione tore her eyes away from the tubes. “Who?”The Mediwitch’s mouth became a thin line, causing her pink lips to lose color. “He’s been waiting outside your room for over an hour.”Shame flooded her mind. Ron always knew when she fell down and got herself dragged into Hospital. The weight of everything she’d done, including pushing him away was too much. Tears pricked the edges of her vision. Would Ron still be willing to drop everything and help her like he always said he would?That was the real reason she’d been pushing him away so hard. For almost a year, she’d been waiting for Ron to take a good, hard look at the mess she’d made of herself and finally, finally decide that she wasn’t worth fighting for. Was she ready to see him walk away?“No. I’m not with him.”“Oh.” The Mediwitch’s hand fell from where she’d been reaching for the door. Her face fell, too. “I hoped he’d finally gotten himself together. That maybe if he was with you, he might have turned his life around.”Her words baffled Hermione. What had happened to Ron to make this woman think he needed turning around? Was there some kind of addiction she didn’t know about? Had she driven him to drink heavily? A million things ran through her mind, all with the refrain of ‘my fault’, and ‘how could I do that to him?’.The doorknob rattled, jolting the Mediwitch to take a step back. An angry voice came through from the other side. “I hear you talking in there. She’s clearly awake. Let me in, Astoria!”The Mediwitch looked to Hermione, her deep brown eyes searching for confirmation. And then it hit. She’d seen that face in the paper. Hermione’s eyes flickered to the name tag, “Greengrass”. There’d been a big announcement in the Prophet, a whole two-page spread featureing her sister’s engagement. One would have to be dead to have missed it.This was Draco’s ex. Hermione’s eyes roamed down to where the Mediwitch’s hips would be hidden behind her white robe. She must have good ones, if Draco had been so taken with the memory of…The rattling continued, so Hermione nodded wearily and watched as the Mediwitch flicked her wrist to release the lock.Draco barged in, eyes darting around like a frenzied goblin. “Did anyone see us?”“No, but if you continue at this volume, they’re likely to hear you.”Mediwitch Greengrass’s voice was like a quiet venom that must have seeped into Draco’s system, because he immediately backed down. Blacked off. He was looking at her with so much…Hermione didn’t even know what that look was, but it meant something. She wondered what kind of thing he still had going on with the Mediwitch, who appraised him with a look that expressed how much she feared for him. How much she cared about him. And also how very sick of him she had become.That look, Hermimone could relate to. On so many levels.“You shouldn't be here,” the Mediwitch whispered. “Especially not with someone connected to the Ministry.”Draco’s hesitation expired, throwing him back into motion. He flicked the lever on the blood bag and tore the tubes out of it. “Get more of whatever’s in here.”“What are you doing? This woman is dying!” The Mediwitch tried to snatch the tubes out of Draco’s hands and reattach them to where they had been before.Hermione watched them hand over fist things until he grabbed the Mediwitch’s arms to make her stop. With his free hand, he grabbed the bag off the pole before she could get to it, and stuffed the whole thing down his pants.“She’s not dying. She’s one of them.”The Mediwitch took a shaky breath and looked like she was counting to ten. Hermione could smell the salt from her unshed tears. “That explains the wasted blood replenishing potions. I told you last time, I’m not helping you anymore.”“Then help her,” Draco said softly. Pleadingly.Hermione hadn’t imagined that Draco could be soft with anyone, yet here he was trying to soothe this distraught woman, and also acting like a complete tosser at the same time. The witch was falling for it, looking back at Hermione with renewed intention. Or, maybe she wasn’t, as she fingered her wand in cotemplation. The only clear thing was that he affected this woman on a personal level way too much for this to be some gotten-over-and-forgotten situation.“The Ministry sent her to me. I don’t know why,” Draco explained. “But she came into the pub like this, and if she dies here, or disappears, the entire Auror’s Department is going to breathe down my neck, get all in my business, and then…”“If you weren’t in this business, a lot of things would be different,” the Mediwitch said defiantly.“You know why I can’t leave it behind,” Draco said with ice in his tone.“I know that if you don’t, it’s going to kill you.”Hermione felt like she was watching a version of herself and Ron, the same argument they had rehearsed and rehashed over the last year until she had finally left because she was so sick of the instant replay every time they were together.Draco had his steely look aimed at the Mediwitch now, and she hurried out of the room wth a muffled sob.What. A. Tosser.If she and Ron had just accepted that all the arguments were because they each cared for each other in their own mixed-up, defiant ways, there would have been no argument at all.As soon as the door closed, Draco threw Hermione’s clothes at her. Her shirt, her pants, her shoes. Not the ones she’d been wearing before. These were clean. “Get dressed. We’re leaving.”“Where did you get these?” Hermione asked.“Your flat security needs work,” he said dismissively. “Move quickly, or soon, you won’t be moving at all.”“You are such an arsehole,” she said to him, reeling from how the witch had looked at Draco… like he had once been her world. “What do you think you’re doing?”“Saving you.”She looked at the door where the Mediwitch had hurried through on the verge of a breakdown. “Why?”The haunted look in his eyes spoke volumes. “You have powerful and… convincing friends. That thing came to me. After I recast the wards in my office, do you understand? Demanded that I get you out of here or he’d kill me.”“Who was it?”“I don’t know who. But he sure knew who you were.” At her blank look, he added, “Dark coat, bad attitude with sharp fangs? He said if you didn’t return tonight, then the messenger is dead.” He looked desperate for her to catch on to what he was saying. “Do it or not. I’m probably dead already. He knows where I live.”“I killed vampires,” Hermione muttered. “Is he angry?”“Good riddance to them. I already got paid anyway. Look, these people… this world you have entered. It doesn’t play politics or hold committee meetings. It’s do what they want, or you’re dead. Honestly, did you think they’d give you another Order of Merlin for sticking your nose into a coven of vampires? Did you do it for cheap thrills? A pay raise?”He sounded like he was more talking about himself than her, but Hermione heard his message under all the rage.“A rogue group of vampires wants me to represent them. They’re the ones who made me into this.”Hermione’s bones felt brittle as she maneuvered herself into her clothes. This shouldn’t be happening. She shouldn’t feel so weak after all the blood she’d consumed, and not after taking Draco’s blood, too. But then, she had spent all of Draco’s blood defending herself against...Oh. Oh, no.“What day is it?” she asked shakily.“It’s still Thursday,” Draco said, checking his watch. “For another hour, at least.”“I’ll fix it tonight. There’s no need for you to be involved any longer.” Hermione’s limbs ached. She wasn’t sure she could walk out of this room on her own two feet, but she was sure going to try.Give or take a few hours.An hour was probably all she had left.Draco laughed helplessly. “Too late. I involved myself when I took you back to my office. The Ministry used to send contacts who knew the meaning of the phrase ‘anonymous source'.``Mediwitch Greengrass came back in with bags in her hands. Her tear-stained eyes were no match for her hard-as-nails voice. “Here. Now get out. Both of you.”Draco’s gaze lingered on the Mediwitch as if he was about to do something they’d all regret later.Apologize, you git, Hermione thought fiercely, knowing that he wouldn’t. Instead, the room spun as he yanked her off the bed. “Let’s go, Granger.”Oh, the blood. She needed that… It didn’t even seem appalling anymore, drinking blood to survive. It was just… necessary. Hermione leaned towards the bag, and Draco shoved it down his pants with the other one.“Not here,” he growled in her ear, shoving her back to her feet. She barely had her shoes on when he pushed her out the door. “You’re going to make it out of here alive,” he growled again, scanning the hallway for anyone that might spot them. “We both are. If I’m going down, it will be because of my own stupid mistakes. Not because of you.”“You’re right. I have to go. What time is it?”“Almost eleven.”“I need to fix this.” If this was her life now, she didn’t want it.As they hurried down the hall to the nearest apparition point, Hermione looked back once more at the Mediwitch, and her heart (if she still had one) plummeted to the earth.She knew that look, too.As she and Draco made their way to the Emergency Exit… as he dragged her past the wards and into a darkened alley… she couldn’t help it. She thought about Ron.If she called him, he would come. If she explained to him about her situation, he would help.Without a doubt.Ron accepted all of her. ALL of her. She could give this up. Reconcile with Ron. She wouldn’t be happy, but she also wouldn’t be this thing that she was becoming.It was too much. Too intense… too… Draco was still in love with that woman, and he was using Hermione to forget. Just like she’d been using him to survive. Well, at least the using went both ways.Seriously, Hermione needed to get her life back. Ron would call in the entire Auror’s Department if that’s what it took, and he would do everything in his power to save her.But then she tried to imagine Ron’s face as she explained her situation, and how Draco Malfoy had been the one to keep her alive.“Wait. Don’t take me home.”Draco’s heel scuffed on the pavement, halting his apparation. “Where else am I supposed to take you? And don’t say the Hairy Arse, because that’s out of the question. It’s a royal wreck after what happened back in the alley.”Hermione wasn’t thinking about the alley. She was thinking about where it all began. “Can you take me somewhere else? I don’t think I can get there on my own.”Funny that she would ask Draco Malfoy, of all people, to help her. After everything.Funny that Draco Malfoy, of all people, would agree.“Where do you need to go?”Suddenly, Hermione was talking as fast as the wind, describing the docks and the warehouse. Her gut twisted as Draco apparated them to the spot. By the time the sudden crack filled the air and he disappeared, leaving her alone in the dark, without a second glance, it was too late.Hermione was surrounded by the smell of fish and piss behind the dumpster, and Ron was no longer an option.She resolutely faced the warehouse and banged on the door.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The echo of fist against steel reverberated through the dark alley, darker now that another streetlight had popped, busted by people probably wanting their after-hours business to remain out of the spotlight. The waters of the Thames loomed nearby, lapping at the side of the pilings. A sliver of moon lit the way to her destination.Hermione sank her teeth into the plastic of the second bag and sucked it dry. The human blood from Mediwitch Greengrass settled her stomach.Her humanity, though…She shoved that thought where it couldn’t reach her. Hermione only had room in her mind for one moral crisis at a time, remembering in vivid detail what she’d done to those vampires. And before that, the glint in Draco’s eyes after what she’d done with him.Guilt ate her up inside. Or was it hunger? Even moments after draining the blood bag, her body was already craving more.Her blood was running cold. Everything around her smelled different, more intense. Questions ran tightening circles around her mind, pulling her shoulders into knots impossible to shrug off. The first time she stood here, she thought she had been taking a giant step towards her newly fought-for-and-won independence and credibility. Now all she wanted was the ability to have her sorry, unfulfilling life back.It wouldn’t be so bad to live with a disability. She still had another hand. She still had her intelligence. She could find people… Muggles… to appreciate what she had left.Whatever she thought she had gained, Hermione knew that hanging on to this dream of getting her magic back would kill her. Or someone else would.No matter, it all ended tonight.She banged on the door, harder this time.“Let me in!” she shouted.The door opened to the same woman in the same outfit.Hermione stepped in, re-seeing the warehouse. The dim light wasn’t so dim - bodies shrouded in black - at least twenty of them, crowded in the shadows wearing rags and robes and refuse. Dark eyes with invisible features stared at her with increasing agitation. They moved like a fog across the floor, getting nearer, but remaining out of the yellow glow of the broken skylight.“Undo what you did to me!” she demanded.The woman smiled, showing her fangs without caution. “Why would we undo it? You have been remade.”Hermione’s memory of the attack came back to her in full force. She specifically remembered the terror and the helplessness of lying on the floor, unable to move. Her human instinct told her to run. A new part of her reminded her what had happened in the back alley of the pub.This time, she had power.“Turn me back!” she commanded.The woman came closer to her, eyes wide.Hermione thought she had done it, that she was controlling this woman like Burns had controlled her at their first meeting. The woman stopped right in front of her, and the air around them went still.The woman’s face softened. “Look at the Newling, discovering her abilities,” she chided. Then she laughed.The room laughed with her, echoing through the open space. Hermione looked around in the dim light that didn’t seem so dim anymore. She could make out faces. Features. Some of them, she recognized. From where? One face in particular came into focus… wasn’t that the woman that had been with Neville?“Emilia, is that you?”The responding snarl contorted the familiar face into a ghoulish caricature, and Hermione backed away, spinning as the woman brushed her arm.“Look how much you’ve gained. Night vision. Speed. Strength. Why would you ever want to go back to what you were? Cursed with no magic. No hope. A husk of your old self, stripped of everything that made you special?”Hermione was speechless. Those were the familiar words she’d used to describe herself in her first session with her therapist. They felt hollow being thrown back at her now. “How did you…”“Because I’m a good listener.” The woman’s features shifted, and suddenly, it became clear why the woman had seemed so familiar. A different face came into focus. Hermione was face to face with her therapist.“Dr. Metzker?”The woman laughed again, and Hermione reeled back in horror. Disbelief. This was the woman who she had trusted for months. The woman who had encouraged her to find her own path. Distance herself from her old life and cut ties with the friends and family who no longer understood her. Hermione realized that all of the self-isolation had been pre-meditated, a systematic plan to isolate her from everyone who ever cared about her.“But you… I trusted you to fix me, to make me stronger.”“So I did. Dr. Metzker was a mask. Do you want to see the real me?”Dr. Metzker’s face contorted again. When it was done changing, nothing about the benevolent therapist was left. There were fangs, sharp cheek bones, sunken eyes, and a deep, hungry longing.“You needed a new life, and we needed someone who understood us, someone who would fight for us. That’s what you do.”“Burns said you’d turn me back.”The vampire paused at the name, and then recovered her composure. “Burns, and the Council are an outdated aristocracy. The Ministry of Magic, however, is ripe for change. Their guilty collective conscience wants to right the wrongs of their society. Well, isn’t that nice.” Metzker chuckled dryly, and the room joined in with what sounded like agreeable chuffing. “They conveniently raised you up as their figurehead for rights and equality. We’ve been watching your high-profile career with great interest. And now that you have a full understanding of who we are and are irreversibly bound to our plight, I’m sure your Ministry will listen.”“I don’t want any part of your coven. Turn me back.”“Did you bring the Portkey?”“No. I would never help you.”“We’ll see about that.”The room swarmed. They were fast. And annoyingly smug. They looked like they were going to attack her,and she chanced to use her magic, which was disastrous, andthere was blood everywhere and she craved it.They were completely undisturbed by it - they were all over her, writhing and sinewy corpse-like things that should repulse her, somehow familiar in their half-distorted faces.She felt their teeth on her, the pull of their greedy mouths, and then just as quickly as they had swarmed, she felt them disengage and fall away to the dark corners of the warehouse, leaving her on the floor, alone.She heard moans and groans. Aching cries.“Finish her!” Metzker ordered, but none of them came forward.“Fine, I’ll do it myself!”But Metzker never had the chance. Hermione had had enough of being a victim. She gathered up the strength within her to roll onto her hands and knees and lunge forward, baring her own teeth. She caught Metzker off guard and off balance, grabbing her around the waist and throwing her to the ground. Claws scratched across her back as she sank her teeth into Metzker’s thigh.Her jaw clamped down uncontrollably, and there was pain - somewhere on her back… with an arm, she pushed the side of Metzker’s head away from her, even as the old Hermione was screaming for her to stop, don’t do it.Metzker was also screaming.Then Hermione got a taste of vibrant clarity. She felt it. Smelled it. Tasted it.At first it felt good. Things inside her shifted. Morphed. Grew and shrank.And then it felt like nothing.Something crashed, incandescent light spilled through the darkness from outside, but she was paralyzed as her body made the final changes. Her heart stopped beating.She didn’t even feel it when her body met the floor.Hermione lay there, not breathing, not anything. Waiting for the fade to black. Waiting for it all to end. She watched the writhing dance of shadows around her - contorting - screaming - as if they forgot all about her. Acrid scent of smoke and flesh filled the air.Heads rolled. Bodies went up in flames.Her own insides were on fire. The release she was expecting was torn away from her, and all she wanted to do was die too.Agony filled her in a sudden rush. Searing pain. White and hot and behind her eyelids and through every limb.She didn’t care about existing anymore. All she wanted was for the pain to leave her alone. She wanted to leave the pain. Even if it meant disappearing forever.Thick-tread lace-up boots stopped by her head.Kill me. Kill me, now.And then they disappeared.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Fire.Billowing smoke.Dragged across the ground.That was all that Hermione could register. That, and the thick-tread boots that kept coming in and out of her line of sight. She rolled slightly to the side, watching the flames in the warehouse rage on.Burns looked quite unconcerned about the distant Muggle sirens wailing their approach as he filled another large bag with ash and tied a cinder block to the end.
“You were supposed to wait for me.” He dumped the bag and block over the side.The murky water swallow the lump and return to stillness. Hermione lay in a crumpled heap, wishing she was in that bag, sinking to the bottom of the river. If she was honest about the effort it took to make her chest rise and fall and the way every part of her body seemed to grow colder by the second, she must be more than halfway dead already. It took a full minute before she realized that Burns had gone still. She turned her head and saw him glaring down at her, as if he was waiting for a response.“All you said was twenty-four hours.” She coughed and spat. “Give or take a few.” Those had been his exact words in her office yesterday afternoon. “You said nothing about waiting.”“I sent a message with that wizard,” he grumbled.“That’s not what he told me,” she rasped, finding it hard to speak through a dry throat. “He said I needed to return, or the messenger was dead.”“He didn’t tell you to meet me at your flat?”She tried to shake her head… could she move anything? Malfoy had mentioned taking her back to her flat, but he hadn’t explained that there was a plan behind it. Granted, he was terrified and probably on a potion (or several). Hermione gave up trying to make her mouth work and grunted.“Your taste in men is sorely lacking.”Oh, yes, Hermione agreed. She should have never… with Malfoy… She should have… could have… she’d slaughtered a gang of vampires under the influence of his blood… it didn’t matter. There was no going back.“Also, that taste in your mouth is the vampire who made you. Your Sire ran off before you got enough of her to make the change.”Sire. The One Who Made Her. All of it sounded dreadfully final. Hermione tried to glare up at Burns, wanting to tear something into shreds, even if it was only with her eyes. But the streetlamp glared right into her face, still refusing to give up its fight against the darkness. All she could do was keep her vision locked onto the blur of concrete by her head and watch as the rest of the body bags sloshed into the water and sank out of view.Burns uncorked something and held it under her nose.Her eyes squeezed shut. No, not another potion. Her mind screamed to refuse, even as her body surged towards the little glass bottle. She hated herself for caring, hated the tug of hope, the cravings, all the sensations that pulled her towards the life she hadn’t asked for.Why did she have to be such a fighter? What had her existence ever been, but a longing to achieve the impossible? She hated the stubbornness, the drive, everything that made her who she was.Burns emptied the potion into her mouth. Immediately, Hermione’s agony dulled, and her focus returned. Her perfect wand hand clenched in response to her body’s lessening pain. How ironic that the one thing she’d been so concerned about getting back was the last thing she was concerned about now.“When will it be over?” she asked.Hermione could practically taste Burns’s rage seeping through his trench coat. When he spoke, his words dripped with it. “They never intended to reverse the ritual. Whether or not you delivered the Portkey, they were going to make you one of them.”He sounded like he actually cared what happened to her. Hermione watched the last of the sacks splash into the water and disappear into the depths. So easy… so… completely and utterly done.This was what it felt like to give up. Hermione coughed, a dry hack of a sound. “So I’m going to die.”“You had her blood in your mouth. Your body’s already changing. She left you with so little that the transformation would have taken all night, and probably into tomorrow. But I need you to be properly functioning.”Hermione’s numb insides still recoiled. “What if I don’t want that?”“Under the circumstances, I think you’ll want to cooperate.”“What circumstances would make it so that I’d actually want to become one of…” Another dry cough interrupted Hermione’s words.“The Council has been tracking Metkzer through five different countries. She wants to create an army to overthrow the Council, to see our kind run like a scourge across the earth. To disregard the protections that we have given to the humans who sustain us. You are in a position to stop her before she tries again.”“Why haven’t you stopped her yet?”“I was sent after she exterminated the last Council representative in Prague. She masks her scent from me with those potions, so I’ve had to follow her trail of destruction. But you understand wizard’s blood. You have tasted her. All I have to do is follow you.”“You want me to do your job for you. Ha.” Hermione coughed again. Burns sounded like a dark, bloody version of Alabastor, who only wanted her for whatever he could get to further his own agenda.“How would you feel if this monster leaves London and goes elsewhere with the same agenda? Could you rest, knowing that your fate is one of many?”Well, no. Not when he put it that way.“Metzker must be ended. I am giving you the opportunity to stop her so no one else will suffer the way you have. It is your right under Council decree as one whom she has made.”Hermione thought about Neville’s friend. She thought about the ash being dumped into the river. She thought about turning to ash herself so she didn’t have to deal with her disappointments and weaknesses—and then she realized she was no longer weak, and that her only disappointment would be that she had stopped trying.But did she want to be a cold, calculating killer? Did she want to exist only for revenge?Burns had closed his eyes. His lips were moving. Then he opened a vein, chanting low and harsh. The few words she could make out sounded like they belonged to an ancient language and rang of a ritual, dark as midnight, older than sin.By the time he came to the end, Hermione found she understood.“Blood is power. Blood restores.”Dark, viscous liquid hit her tongue, and her body reacted immediately, writhing and seeking more.More never came.“That will be enough to sustain the change. Then you will be ready to put your new existence to good use.”“Good?” she nearly shrieked when her mouth broke free of the paralysis, wanting and needing, but knowing that she wasn’t getting any more of Burns’ blood. The gnawing emptiness inside of her seemed to grow larger just to spite her. “I’m a bloodsucker. I will be forced to feed on the lives of others to sustain myself. What good could I ever do?”Burns ignored her contemptuous stare and listened to the oncoming sirens getting closer by the second. “Read what you want into the stories. Not everyone who lives in the shadows wants to destroy the world.”Water lapped the side of the dock, slapping against the rubber posts. She felt the sickening, irreversible change… and with it, a promise that nothing would ever be the same.Her breath stopped coming in short, wispy gasps. Her limbs regained their feeling and her muscles flexed. Hermione felt the weakness seep out of her like water through a sieve.Fatigue vanished, replaced by a power she had never encountered within herself before.She sat up and glared at the vampire still throwing weighted body bags into the river.“Why didn’t you let me die?” she accused.“I told you. You’re useful.”“I didn’t ask for this!” she said through parched lips, saliva drying on her tongue faster than her body could produce it. If it ever did that anymore.“Many of us don’t.” Burns stared down at her with dark eyes.“How am I supposed to go back to my…” Hermione’s words stuttered to a halt on her tongue. There was no life for her to go back to. She’d been transformed into this unbelievable, incomprehensible thing. “Now that I’m like this?” she finished.Hermione cringed at the sound he was making. Burns, the vampire was laughing at her, which made everything worse.Then he stopped, and his face became a mask of calm, making a chill run through her already-chilled body. She could hear the screeching of brakes and voices as the first responders approached the burning warehouse and attempted to see if anyone was still inside.Burns offered a hand, and Hermione instinctively took it.He helped her up and led her away from the water. “That’s what these poor creatures failed to understand. Learn this lesson now, and learn it well.” As they left the sirens and the saviors of the Muggle world behind them, he pointed to where the warehouses ended and the road back to town began. “There is no going back. We don’t belong in that world. And after tonight, neither do you.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Hermione Granger had always believed if she was going to do anything at all, she was going to be the best at it. Ironically, her night ended as it normally did, by cataloguing and identifying the complex emotions from a grueling day she hadn’t asked for, and focusing on what lay ahead.In this case, it meant walking home. Again.This time, the street people refused to make eye contact with her. The hole-in-the-wall pub and the reflective surfaces of the glass shop windows held no interest. Her senses reached beyond the rubbish bins, asphalt and exhaust, detecting things she had never encountered before.They hung in the air like clothes on a wash line. Pain. Loneliness. Damnation. If she turned her head just right, she could locate their origin.Her wand hand stretched out and rotated at the wrist, itching to flick and swish, even though there would be no power behind it. She hadn’t asked to become a witch. No one had asked for her consent. No one had given her a choice. But when she’d found out that she had magic, she had made it her life’s mission to excel at every turn. Despite the prejudices and the steep learning curve and the outdated traditionalists standing against her, she’d fought to establish her place as a valuable member of Wizarding Society.Burns had departed some blocks behind her with vague instructions to go somewhere her body would be undisturbed and complete the transformation. She’d asked questions, which he’d summarily dismissed with, “You will know when you know.” Then, before she could get any answers out of him, he did one of his irritating disappearing acts into the shadows.As mentors went, she ranked him one of the worst she’d ever had, but Hermione didn’t have a choice in that either. For the second time, her existence had irreversibly changed. As the finality sank in, she could detect the running parallels.And so she ran.Rows of buildings passed in a blur. Flats and houses soon replaced the industrial district. The air changed from machine oil and drudgery to comfort and old friends. The waft of crab curry and fish cakes halted her progress briefly to regard the darkened doors of her favorite restaurant. With the scents suitably stuck in her nose, she moved on.She didn’t need to flick on the light in her flat, but she did it anyway, out of habit and briefly acknowledged the empty kitchen island. Her ruined clothes fell to the floor, and the shower ran hot. Water chased the lingering stench of the docks into a muddy swirl at the bottom of the stall, and Hermione watched in morbid fascination as the blood and grime carried her past life down the drain.She was a changed woman. And yet, her first instinct was the same.What did it take to be a good vampire? Were there any good vampires in the world?Hermione toweled herself off, pulled the curtains closed and laid down on top of her covers. She stared at the ceiling as her body went limp. One by one, her physical aches faded to nothing. Then her thoughts became fuzzy, she closed her eyes, and stopped thinking at all.It almost felt like a dream.“What will you do for me?” she asked.“Anything.”Hermione felt herself smile. “Will you give me everything I need?”“Everything!”The desperate tone made her dig deeper. “How far will you go?”“To the ends of the earth. Hermione, I would die for you!”Images flared behind her eyelids. It was Ron, except it wasn’t. Hermione had her hands wrapped around his torso, holding him in place with an inhuman strength she didn’t know she had with her mouth suctioned to his neck, pulling at his life force. Draining him. She could see his skin turning pale under her.Why wasn’t he struggling? Why wasn’t he fighting her off?She finally shoved his body away from her. Something wet dripped on her chin. She couldn’t help the instinctive move to catch the blood with the tip of her tongue before it slid off and onto the ground.The man who had loved her lay at her feet. Waves of dread, followed by disgust, followed by horror crashed over her.Hermione woke with a gasp. A sliver of light fought its way through the pulled curtains, resting on the corner of her bed.Her clock showed the time: three fifteen in the morning. That light was too early for the dawn of a new day. Even so, she instinctively rolled away from the artificial glow coming from a streetlight outside. This was still her flat. This was still her bed. But that… nightmare… or vision… or whatever vampires called pictures in their heads… That could never happen.Unless it already had.She stepped over the trail of clothes and opened her bedroom door, bracing herself for whatever lay beyond. Half-expecting a body and blood, or a struggle, Hermione peered around her flat, but all she found was her empty couch with its throw pillows in their proper places. The only thing amiss was a bare shelf from the lower section of one of her bookcases where she’d pulled the manuals to research the bites on her body after the attack. Hermione located the stack of misplaced books on a side table near the kitchen.She inhaled deeply, testing the air. No trace of Ron or his blood.The eerie silence heightened other sounds she picked up on. Her owl, Krustus, ruffled feathers on his perch in the corner. A breeze flowed through the half-open window he’d flown through to get back home. The electric refrigerator hummed in the kitchen, and her bedroom clock ticked through each passing second. Through it all, her ears searched for the missing rhythms that used to be in her life.The silence within startled her. No heartbeat. Her breathing was a habitual, coordinated response to her body’s movements. She didn’t need books or a backstabbing therapist to tell her what she was. Her old life was dead to her. She was… dead. And yet, here she was. Whole. Strong.Certainty filled the space within her where fear used to live. Her place was in the shadows. Her existence was in the darkness.Was she sad? Would she mourn her old life? Maybe later, when the newness of this unsettling calm wore off. But right now, she had her instructions from Burns. She would seek out Metzker. Face her maker.This knowing also made other things crystal clear.If her ex-fiancee showed up on her doorstep and pressed the issue of coming in to have a chat, that dream was only a breath away from becoming reality.Had she loved Ron? Of course she had. Once upon a time, it had been that fierce, mad-deep-run-to-the-ends-of-the-earth-and-back devotion.It was mercy, she tried to tell herself. Mercy was the purest form of love. She would probably get lonely. She would probably pine out of desperation to be loved. But there was no way she could ever see Ron again. She should end whatever farce still existed between them now.Before she ended him.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The early rays of dawn didn’t catch Hermione on fire any more than when she had been a half-turned Newling. Apparently, the books she owned that referenced vampires needed a complete overhaul, because much of what she had read about them seemed to be invalid or incomplete, or in the case of bursting into flame at the touch of sunlight, utterly wrong. Her new existence greatly heightened her sense of smell, an unexpected bonus, if it weren’t for the residue of death hanging in the air. The Unseen watched her pass, and she wondered what they must think of her boldly striding down the street as the others of her kind receded into the deep shadows. Then she decided that she didn’t care. Besides the occasional vehicle that swept by, there was no one else on the street at this ungodly hour.The glass door to the high rise office building gave way as she entered the lobby and turned towards the stairs. With seemingly no effort at all, she pumped her legs up to the fourth level.Why hadn’t she simply come here after the attack? Why had she waited so long to confront this woman who had sent her into that warehouse trap? In hindsight, and probably long before, it had been so clear who had been responsible for what happened to her. She hadn’t been ready to face the truth. But she could now.She had been afraid. After the loss of her magic, one more substantial failure would have surely tipped her into madness. But really, what could she possibly have gained by confronting her therapist so quickly afterwards, in such a weak and indefensible state? Would Metzker have reversed the ritual if she’d come sooner? Knowing Metzker the therapist, and then meeting Metzker the monster, the answer would surely have been no.Maybe, the real reason she hadn’t faced Metzker sooner was that it would prove she had learned nothing from all those therapy sessions. That all she was doing was fretting over something that no one could change. According to Burns, Metzker had broken the treaty by interfering with the wizarding community. By Council decree, she must be made to answer for her actions.Hermione swung the stairwell door open, desperately needing those answers.Doors flanked the long hallway on either side, leading to corporate offices. Passing a pediatric oral surgeon, a commercial barrister, three travel agencies and an actuary service, she encountered the familiar plaque. Eagle wings, spread out to their fullest span, with the letters “FW” in the center used to make her think that she’d finally found a source of empowerment for her life. Now it was an irritating reminder of her naïve hope that anything in her life could ever go back to the way it was.Hermione tried the doorknob, and then she knocked. And then, because she didn’t want to be caught standing in the hallway in front of a locked door if someone happened along at this early hour, she paced back and forth, thinking through her options.If she had magic, she could unlock the door without a trace and search the office for clues. Alomahora could open the door without force. Revelio could uncover anything hidden that may help her in locating her therapist. There were tracking spells and other spells she knew by heart that would give her everything she needed.But last night, she’d learned a lot about magic and blood and how relying on the tools of her old life would lead to her own destruction. The blood she’d taken directly from Draco had almost totally consumed her. She’d panicked in the face of her own destruction and caused a bloodbath in the back of that pub. And then, completely spent, she’d collapsed.She still didn’t know why Draco had been so bent on keeping her alive. She didn’t understand why he’d saved that bottle for her and given it to her before she walked in to meet her maker. All she knew was that his actions had enabled her to survive the encounter intact.Traces of Metzker still flowed within her, along with the residue of Burns’s essence, which had given her body the strength it needed to complete the change. She was calm. Her body didn’t crave. Her senses picked up on the hint of her Sire in the musty odor of the hallway. Someone else had come to this office with her, someone who had been willing. Hermione inhaled, almost tasting the air, and found no evidence of magical blood. At least it hadn’t been a witch or wizard.She peered through the partially closed vertical blinds. Through the dim light, she clearly made out an appointment book skewed diagonally across Metzker’s desk. Next to it, a pen carelessly balanced on the edge, about to roll to the floor. Unopened mail was tossed in a frenzied pile on the other corner, and the touchtone telephone’s cord connected to an answering machine whose little red light blinked with an unplayed message.There could be something useful in there, but even vampires couldn’t compel a locked door. The window glass would easily shatter and was big enough to climb through, but Hermione didn’t want to leave a trace… or did she?She’d been to the Agency often enough to notice the adjoining conference room in the back, where the actuaries met with their clients from time to time. Even though she had no idea what kinds of hours actuaries kept, she didn’t sense any heartbeats behind the locked door. Good enough. She went next door, shoved hard enough to crack the frame, and let herself in. Then she carefully realigned the hinges. Any passerby would see a closed door. No one would notice the damage until the actuary came back and found that the door was, in fact, not locked.Hermione breezed through the adjoining office to the conference room and shared privy between the two offices. She flipped the latch and let herself in.The month of May had “Granger” neatly penned into several squares, with the last one crossed out in bold strokes. That was the appointment she’d missed. Hemione wondered if Metzker had really expected her to show up to that appointment after the attack. Dark stars marked other squares, along with a small scribble. Hermione didn’t need her notes to recognize the address of the warehouse. If she bothered to cross reference the dates, they would probably match Draco’s delivery records.Through the large window facing the skyline of London’s business district, the sun had cleared the buildings. Its silver sheen reflected off the glass and metal architecture, creating a pool of light where Metzker’s patients sat.Five days ago, Hermione had been a living, breathing human, asking for a miracle to fix her life. She’d poured out her heart on that couch, and in return, that woman had stopped it from beating.Well, that was one cure for misplaced trust. Of all the opinions she could have of her therapist, she had to admit that the woman had been highly effective at systematically isolating her from all of her support systems. Because of Metzker, Hermione had stopped calling friends. She’d stopped seeing Ron.Hermione sniffed the air. She could still sense all the things she’d given up on the word of a manipulative, self-serving monster. Love. Trust. Familiarity. Friendship. The last scent seemed to come from somewhere nearby.Why did Metzker’s desk smell like Neville?She rattled Metzker’s drawers. Then she rattled them harder. Her ears picked up a small thud, and when she looked under the desk, a small key had been jostled out of its hiding place and landed on the carpet.Hermione unlocked the drawer and lifted the box onto the desk. She inhaled, tracing the source of the scent to somewhere among the articles inside. Her hand sifted past a necklace with a stone pendant and an engraved ring. There was even a day pass for the Ministry of Magic and a wizarding photo of a Ministry worker and their loved one. And then her fingers brushed against a bracelet with an assortment of keys hanging from it.Wizards didn’t usually have keychains. Hermione had one, but that was because she wasn’t magical. She sniffed at it. Neville had held this one in his hand. It had been Emilia’s.Through the item, she sensed Neville’s loss. Neville’s despair. Hermione’s own feelings tangled up with his. Loss and anger flowed through her, but she forced herself to put the keychain back in the box. This was for Neville to find. To give him closure.Hermione would bet Galleons that the necklace and the other contents of the box could be identified by the families of the other missing Muggles.These people hadn’t had a choice either. Metzker had turned them into monsters to carry out her self-serving plans. And if Burns was as thorough as he’d looked that night on the dock, they were now ashes at the bottom of the river.Hermione was about to return the box to the drawer, but stopped short when she saw a folder tucked away in the back. She pulled it out and flipped it open, scanning what seemed to be a list of names.Most of them matched the missing Muggles from the Ministry breakroom posters. Muggles connected to wizards. The handwriting couldn’t be anyone’s but Gringus Alabastor’s distinctly loopy script. Hermione would recognize it anywhere. After everything she’d been through, she wasn’t surprised to find that her antagonistic boss had given Metzker easy targets. And if he was trying to get rid of her, this would make so much sick, morbid sense.She read through it twice, and then a third time, but couldn’t find her name on the list.How… Why… Ahh.It seemed that while Gringus was using Metzker to create a vampire-inspired panic among the wizards, Metzker seemed to be setting up Gringus for a hostile takeover. Would she have asked Hermione to kill him to cover her tracks? Would Hermione have been as far gone as the rest of Metzker’s minions and done the deed for her maker?Violence never served justice. Not the way Hermione saw it. No, there were more humane ways to even the scales. That was the whole reason she’d clung to her job for as long as she had. Hermione Granger stood for fairness and respect, not bloodshed. Or at least that’s what she had believed before.The next slip of paper was a stained sales receipt. Oh, she knew whose blood that was. If she dug further into the drawer, she’d probably find a collection of small, empty bottles with residue of Draco’s blood inside. Well, that connected Metzker to Gringus and to Malfoy. But the timing was still off. Hermione had first gone to Metzker over a month ago, which meant that perhaps Metzker had somehow orchestrated all of this on her own.Burns had infiltrated the Ministry of Magic building easily enough. No alarms had gone off. Not even Henry had known he had been there, and he’d been right outside the door. If Metzker was half the vampire that Burns was, she could have done the same. Which led to the question of how many creatures of the night could come and go as they pleased, without wizards and witches noticing.Had Hermione been a coincidental victim? No, that business card for the Freedom Wings Agency had been deliberately placed in her inbox. Metzker had been there, seen Hermione’s situation, and then chosen her mark long before Hermione even realized.Backing her thoughts up, Hermione muddled through what seemed to be Metzker’s agenda of gaining the Ministry’s sympathy. None of it made sense. Whether by accident or through meditated purpose, many vampires, including herself, were created unjustly. Justice could be served if these victims were represented by the Ministry, but to what end? The only way to stop a Sire from repeating the offense was death, and the Ministry didn’t sanction vampire hunters.She guessed that Metzker’s agenda really didn’t matter. What mattered was that somehow, she had gotten the cooperation of Gringus Alabaster, and he had given her names of Muggles close to Ministry personnel. He had tried to set her up to be a reason for the Ministry to move against the Council. That also seemed like an inexplicable move, but it wasn’t her job to understand the insanity of others. It was her job to see that justice, whatever form that took, was served.Hermione took all the papers and records. Then she slipped the box back into the drawer and locked it, being careful to place the desk key back into its hidden spot under the lip of the desk. She tucked the files away under her shirt and turned to face the blinding sun.If she connected the dots and presented hard evidence of vampire involvement within the Ministry, Gringus Alabastor could use it to push for a vampire-hunting license. And that precedent would re-open the discussion regarding other beings who were labeled dangerous and out of control… like the werewolves.She had nothing to prove her hunch, but the implications paved a dangerous road towards undoing all of her work to get the werewolves their much-needed protections. If her boss had been actively working against her for the last six months, then Gringus Alabastor’s hidden agenda was far worse than she ever imagined.On the other hand, if Metzker’s plan to gain sanctuary under Ministry rule succeeded, they would use it to escape from the Council’s brutal justice system. They would increase their numbers without consequences. Eventually, with enough wizard’s blood in them to make them crazy, they would overrun the Ministry with blood-sucking monsters.Metzker had manipulated Hermione’s insecurities easily enough. Now she was wondering if Metzker had manipulated her boss’s inflated ego as well. How did Metzker think all of this was going to work out, exactly? To Hermione, it sounded like an excuse to start another war.Okay, now that made it clear why the Council had called Burns in to hunt her down.The telephone rang. Hermione spun around and stared at the machine as it rang a second time. A third. And then the light on the machine stopped flashing and went solid red.Beep.Beep beep beep. Someone was entering a code on the other end of the line.Hermione listened as the recording played. “Dr. Metzker, please call me back. I don’t know what’s happening to me. The regiment you set up for me seems to have caused some kind of reaction. And there’s someone in my flat. Please…” The panicked voice cut off amidst a scuffling sound, a short cry, and the sound of laughter.Beep.The machine clicked once and then went silent. The light turned off.That wasn’t a message left in real time. Someone had called in remotely to receive the message. And deleted it.Hermione remembered the screams of the burning creatures in the warehouse and how, instead of running to preserve themselves, they’d rallied against the threat to allow their leader to escape. Dr. Metzker had sacrificed her unsanctioned coven to get away from Burns. Apparently, she was wasting no time rebuilding it.It also appeared that she was checking her messages.Hermione still had the paperwork and the ability to make that Portkey happen. Burns had said not to, but he also said to do whatever was necessary. Dr. Metzker had to be stopped.She exited through the joint conference room and carefully pushed the broken frame of the Actuary’s office door back into place. Out on the street, the traffic had picked up considerably, heralding another busy morning. Hermione shrugged through the crowds, headed for the nearest telephone box and dialed. The machine in Metzker’s office picked up.After the beep, Hermione spoke. “Hello, Dr. Metzker. You know who this is. You know what you did. Call me soon. I want to make a deal.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Hello.”Draco guessed that the petite blonde shamelessly putting her hands all over him had a hint of Veela in her. Her classy, yet blinding sheath of sequins pretending to be a dress sent reflections of light in all directions. She’d probably be willing to discard it as easily as the modesty she had obviously binned at the door. He tried to remind himself why getting tangled up in non-humans was a bad idea, but the internal debate quickly ended when the hand she had on his hip started tracing lower. He was beyond caring what kind of creature she was. All he wanted to do was to put Astoria Greengrass out of his mind as quickly as possible.The bittersweet reunion at the hospital had been like a knife to his gut. Poison in his air. He almost audibly groaned as the knife twisted at the memory. It hurt so bad to remember how it hurt to be away from her.It was Astoria’s face he beat off to on most nights when he was alone. The face he imagined when he needed a rise to satisfy whoever else demanded what he no longer had the strength to deny.The barkeep interrupted Draco’s silent musings by setting two glasses next to him. “New friend?” he asked, a knowing glint in his smile.Draco took the drinks and turned his back on the barkeep, concentrating on giving his ‘new friend’ a glass, and then gulped down his own. Any interest the barkeep developed regarding Draco’s acquaintences made his blood run cold, and he was more interested in turning up the heat. Anything to burn away the raw ache that he thought he’d already buried. Apparently, it had not been buried deep enough.The thing was, he never considered himself the heartless bastard his father had tried to raise. Not that he was an illegitimate son. His pureblood was as untainted as freshly fallen snow, and yet he hadn’t been cold enough to let Granger die. Before he could think about what he was doing and who he was putting at risk, he had rushed her to St. Mungo’s.Draco Malfoy accepted that he was many things. Fuck himself, but he was not, nor had he ever, been a killer.She’d done it again. Astoria Greengrass had granted him that unearned mercy every time he’d run back to her. Even after telling him off (soundly, and with much fervor), she still patched up his wounds. Provided him with blood from the wizard’s reserve in the Hospital’s emergency inventory when he’d severely overdrawn. And that one time with the run-in with the Centaur over unicorn horns (they were dead already, what use did they have for their horns, anyway?)… he’d learned that cursed crossbow bolts were no joke. He’d also learned that Astoria Greengrass, though she would never give up helping him, had finally given up on them. It had been all too clear that when she stopped asking him to quit and he’d stopped insisting this time was the last, they’d had nothing left to talk about.Maybe she’d still be the face he imagined when he got this cute trollop alone and under him.Fuck it, he needed to do something tonight other than retreat to his private office and stare at the fresh stock of potions in his cabinet that he’d hastily gotten ready for the next drop. Just in case he hadn’t made his pathetic state clear enough, Metzker hadn’t shown. Neither had any of her minions.Double shite, because the rent was due again, and Draco had no idea what he was going to do about the barkeep’s sudden demand for the increase in production. The man behind the bar wouldn’t use his teeth on Draco, but he might, as he reminded Draco almost every day, take a bite out of the only person left Draco cared about.Or anyone else who got too close to him.The blonde thing beside him rubbed his chest in a way that he’d appreciate more if he didn’t have half a mind to take that crate of unclaimed product and hawk his wares on the streets. Vending in the gutters of Knockturn Alley wouldn’t get half what his potions were worth, but Sickles were better than nothing for his trouble.And oh fuck, it had been a whole lot of trouble. He’d almost overdrawn on himself to finish, too, because vampire deadlines weren’t just words. Mostly dead was better than all the way dead, any day of the week.“On the house!” the barkeep announced, pulling in another crowd who had just come through the pub's door. The barkeep was in a rare mood… a good one this time, likely from the positive reviews his patrons had given the new decor.Oh yeah, sleep deprivation was the other reason Draco was so strung out. Most of the rest of his night and the whole next day, while the barkeep had given his best clients unusual discounts so they wouldn’t notice the blood running through the back hallway, Draco was charged with ‘fixing things’. He’d called in a few favors, since renovating a centuries-old pub tangled up in centuries-old spells, charms and hexes was not as easy as the home decorating programs on the telly made it out to be.Good thing he was a talented wizard. Draco looked over at the back wall, the dark paneling replaced by polished, high-end marble wall tile, and the newly acquired chandelier that reflected as much light as it gave off, admiring his handiwork. Sicilian Mobster was a difficult aesthetic to argue with… all shiny surfaces and high-end gilded accents.He’d expected it to clash with the usual clientele, but instead it had drawn in a higher class crowd. Or maybe their current customers had taken one look at the renovations and changed their clothes.Draco briefly wondered if there were higher class vampires out there who would pay more for his product, now that the lowlifes had expired. Where was Metzker, anyway? And had she done away with Granger for good?His stomach involuntarily dropped at how he’d taken Hermione directly to the warehouse where he’d previously made deliveries. He figured that even in her worn-down state, she was better off dealing with whomever was in that warehouse than he was. He’d given her one of his potions, so at least he could tell himself that he’d helped.Frankly, when an angry, trench-coated vampire showed up unannounced and made demands to deliver Hermione Granger alive, it was prudent to follow orders. He might have been confused by the specific location, but arguing with a half-turned, pissed off vampire in the middle of the night about where she wanted to be taken was also a kiss of death he didn’t want to temptThe possibility that Hermione was somehow connected to Metzker made his stomach drop even lower. He’d left her at the door to the warehouse, alone in the middle of the night. But really, did a vicious killer need warning against another vicious killer? He saw how ruthlessly Metzker had dealt with uncooperative underlings. He’d watched Hermione take down half a dozen vampires all on her own. Did she have any of that power left? Had his potion helped? Had Metzker killed her?Was he supposed to even care?It hadn’t been more than twenty-four hours ago. Draco didn’t know if she had survived the night, but if he wanted to retain whatever sanity he had left, he absolutely could not allow himself to feel responsible for Hermione Granger. He’d done what the vampire asked. He’d done what Hermione had asked. He was clear of all of that mess, whatever it had led to.And now he had been dead set to forget the entire clusterfuck and especially his part in it. The glitzy woman nibbled on his neck, fanned her breath across his cheek, and pulled his head down so she could whisper in his ear. Draco didn’t hear anything she said, too busy tracking the barkeep’s eager eyes on them. Ah, there were definitely traces of Veela here, and he wanted more than anything to indulge in this momentary reprieve. Pretend his life wasn’t as hell-bent on self-destructing as it felt right now. But he couldn’t use this trollop as an escape from his barely living existence if her involvement with him was going to paint a target on her back.She made pouting noises as he politely tried to put some distance between them. But damn it all, as he was trying, for once, to do the right thing, the door to the pub opened, and Draco’s world stopped spinning.Hermione Granger walked in. Draco sat up a little straighter. Blinked a little faster. Shoved the blonde who was trying to climb into his lap away. That walk… that body… that confidence blew the roof off the building.Fuck. Me.She really did it. She’d joined the damned. And look at her. She was so strong.So free.“Oi,” the blonde complained, trying to pry his attention away from the woman who had just walked into The Prickly Arse, but Draco barely heard.His mind whirled with all kinds of new possibilities. This could be the answer he’d been searching for. If his blood made a half-turned wizard-vampire invincible to spells, what would it do to a full vampire-wizard?Hermione Granger had just earned an O in next-level bad-arsery, and Draco decided he needed a tutor. Someone who could teach him the trick of surviving a vampire attack. And at the same time, could possibly make him forget that Astoria Greengrass ever existed.If she wanted his blood in return, he was going to let her have what little remained.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The Grand Reopening sign had given Hermione pause at the door. Of course the Prickly Arse Pub had to do something after she’d turned their back alley into a bloodbath. Even with magic, which she was sure they’d used, the cleanup would have taken a great deal of effort.Inside, polished, marble tile framed quaint pastoral tapestries that hung from ceiling to floor. At the bar, Draco had upscaled his wardrobe with a black suit and bowtie. His slicked hair made him look like a member of the Sicilian Mafia, complete with the glitzy piece of arm candy whispering in his ear.Hermione’s mouth watered, and she bit back a laugh. Really? That was what she was craving now? Ah, maybe inflated-confidence tasted better than washed-out-desperation. Which, she had to admit, had tasted very good to begin with.That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Because even after a full day of doing the job you love most in the world, with all your renewed strength and power, and the evidence you collected to close that case file that Gringus Alabastor thought you couldn’t… you’re still missing something vital. Something only he could give you.She was certain that Draco Malfoy could give her another fun ride and a short-lived power trip. But the thing she really, really wanted was to see if her other hunch was correct. She was a full vampire. Her hand had completely healed. Could turning into a vampire have erased the magical curse she’d been plagued with for so long?Any witch or wizard between her flat and the Ministry of Magic could have served to test her theory, but that would have caused a messy scene. No, it was better to come here, where she already had a willing participant.Draco stared straight at her and dropped his arm from the candy at his side. Oh, yes. He was willing enough. Hermione would have felt sorry for the chit if she was capable of feeling anything other than the emptiness that had pushed her here. This should work. This had to work.She took the lead and went to the back hall, where he followed closely behind without comment. Hermione paused as Draco brushed past her to unlock his office.Despite the hollowness under his eyes, a healthy, pink tinge showed through his pale skin. He was clean and neat and fresh—truly fresh. Not simply from hygiene spells. Hermione could smell the dampness from under his collar and the soap he’d used. Draco must have taken care of himself, or someone had taken care of him after last night. It made her briefly wonder about the Mediwitch.As he swung the door open, Hermione considered just how much was different from the last time she’d stepped into this room.Herself.Him.The decor.“Venetian tile?” she asked, looking down at the waxed shine so bright beneath her feet she could catch the ceiling’s reflection in it.“Yeah, the blood drained into the floors. We had to change them.”“I bet it would be difficult to get blood out of the carpet,” she said, just to continue the conversation, her heels clicking soundly against the floor.“Not enough magic in the world,” he muttered, going straight for the cabinet.Hermione hovered near the new, posh couch, reluctant to sit down. Not yet. Something hung heavy in the air, and all the new grout and floor polish wasn’t able to block it out. She watched his back stiffen as he grabbed two small bottles and closed the doors of the cabinet. Perhaps his casualness from last time had been a side effect of his potions.Where was the determination coming from?“What will it be this time?” he asked. “Blood? Sex? Both?”“That’s why I’m here,” she confirmed.Bottles clinked. “Right.” Two clarity potions appeared on the desk. Draco turned towards her, loosening his top two buttons.He looked resigned. But also eager. Hermione hadn’t shown him Galleons. He wasn’t talking price. She knew he hadn’t meant for her to see the way he’d tried and failed not to look at the framed photograph of the woman with the straight hair and dark brown eyes next to his potions stash. That was the woman who had given her the blood bags at St. Mungo’s.“Who is she?” There was no jealousy in her question.“Just a trollop at the bar.”“The Mediwitch,” she clarified.His hands paused on the third button. The intense chemistry, the longing, and the frustration between Draco and the woman he’d rudely strong-armed into helping them at St. Mungo’s had been so thick it could have been dished up as a dessert. Hermione knew those feelings deeply, intimately, and recognized that they came with a price. Never in her life had she imagined she would have such a thing as shared emotions in common with Draco Malfoy. Curiosity prodded her along.“Not that I care,” she added with a flip of her hand. “I just thought it’d be a good story.” Learning a trick from Burns, she let her fangs drop for emphasis and leaned on the arm of the couch.Draco’s eyes gave away his nerves, but he kept his composure. “And here I thought you were coming in for a good time.” His hands fell away from the buttons entirely, and he sat down behind the desk. Then he stood back up. Then he started pacing across the new area rug in front of her.“How much do you want to hear before we can get to the real show?”She folded her arms in front of her and slid down into the cushions, making herself comfortable at last. This was, she decided, a fine replacement for the sofa. Hermione didn’t know why she wanted to hear Draco’s mess of a life story, except that maybe it would make her think better of her own.“Start talking, and I’ll tell you when I’ve heard enough.”He quirked a brow at the commanding statement. For a moment she thought about using her heightened compelling power to make him tell her, but it was more interesting to see if he was willing to offer more than physical thrill and a power rush.“She was the best thing about me,” he finally said. “But like everything I do, I cursed it. This job, the one that was supposed to make up for all of my bad choices, drove her away.”“I can see why,” Hermione muttered, shifting her weight on the cushions. It really was a comfortable couch. But exquisite back support and fancy throw pillows couldn’t conjure up a reason for anyone with a pulse to support Draco’s dangerous business model.“I fucked it up the arse. Choosing dirty money over the woman I used to love.”“You still love her,” Hermione told him.“Not enough to stop making stupid deals.” Bitterness dripped from his words. “I signed the contract in blood. And then, like an Unbreakable Bond, it went down exactly the way Astoria said it would. The barkeep took me for everything I had. But that wasn’t the worst part.”He looked really bitter then, twisting his gait from pacing into switchback circles. “He found out about her. About us.” He sighed. “All he had to do was mention her name, and I caved. I don’t blame her for wanting no part of this bloody business. She hates me now.”“She wants to hate you,” Hermione corrected. The way the Mediwitch looked at Draco in the treatment room looked exactly like how Ron looked at her every time she had refused his help. The silence settled over her next thought.But Mediwitch Greengrass had still helped.Draco stopped right in front of her, letting his hands fall to his sides in defeat. “I just… is it too much to ask to want to forget everything for a while?”So that’s what he was getting out of this. He wanted to forget her. Hermione wasn’t sure if he would succeed in banging the Mediwitch out of his head, but she had her own goal in mind for the evening. Talking about their shared pain, as enlightening as it could be, would not get either of them where they wanted to go.Hermione had been patient enough. She kicked off her heels and stood up. “Okay, then.”Draco scoffed. “Okay?” He resumed unfastening his buttons, muttering about how none of it was okay.“What potion are you on this time?” she asked, moving towards him. Compared to the small number of naked bodies she’d seen in her life, there was certainly nothing wrong with his. Especially with how well he used it.A small ripple of muscles danced under his pale skin as he cast his shirt aside and unfastened his belt. “I don’t need a potion for this. You?”He stepped out of his pants, and Hermione duly noted how Draco certainly didn’t look like he needed any kind of help for what they were about to do. With the feel of plush wealth under her toes, Hermione appraised the way that Draco moved with such surety, the way he lifted a hand and ran a finger across her collarbone, tracing the v-neck of her blouse. That light, deliberate touch, and the way he followed it with his eyes sent a shiver through her.“There used to be marks here,” he said.The bite marks, the incisions and scratches, everything from her first vampire attack had miraculously vanished after her final change.The marks of Draco’s old life ran down his arms. Others danced across his chest. A faded blemish inside his forearm stood as a constant reminder of which side of the war his family had chosen, and still, even with the war over years ago, he hadn’t been able to escape his past.She traced them all with her own fingers, setting her judgment aside as she silently acknowledged who he was. Maybe Hermione could do him a kindness and make him forget about his life for a while. That’s what he seemed to want, and as long as she got what she came for, she could oblige. She reached down and wrapped her fingers around Draco’s hardness, causing him to stiffen even more.He sucked in a gasp and then leaned into her hold. “You’re surprisingly good at that.”“Same,” she whispered as his hands worked smoothly on her buttons. Then he discarded the blouse and his fingers trailed a heat along her skin that made her feel like she was still alive. He looked like he was memorizing her… no… more like he was trying to replace a memory.Draco’s fingers expertly discarded the rest of her clothes, and came back to move over her the way one would as if crafting a thing to be admired. Her arms moved on their own, exploring him in turn. Pride in one's work was always admirable, Hermione thought briefly, as the couch touched the back of her legs and they sank into the cushions together.Their bodies mingled with the smells of want and loss, the muddled sense of purpose that drove Draco to repeat his bad decisions over and over, so similar to the endless loop of dependency that Hermione had, until recently, been living in. She pulled him closer, and he exposed his own neck as if he was gladly offering to let her feed off his despair. When she bit down and tasted him, he hissed in her ear.Hermione clenched her hands around him. “I need to feel it.” She was certainly feeling all the things, his weight, the way he moved on top of her, but she was focused on the magic. If… if she could reclaim that one piece of her, it would be worth all the damnation in the world. She wanted it coursing through her body again. Just to know that she could… if she wanted to.“I need it, too. Do it!” Draco said.The temperature of the room spiked as she took a long pull from the vein in his neck. Draco broke into a heavy sweat as he strained to hold himself above her. His blood flowed through her with the familiar surge of power, but even as it entered her, she could tell that none of it was hers.She pulled away from his neck, felt her body sing while he rocked into her, wondering how, and at the same time, relishing in the way that two people could make such a fantastic mess of each other. And still, the thing she had come for stayed well out of her grasp.Surprisingly, when she pushed against his chest, he came away, or maybe it was her new strength that she could direct him so easily. He grunted and pulled out as she twisted around, found one of the throw pillows and shoved it under her. It was all the invitation he needed to grab her hips from behind and ram into her repeatedly. Each time, she kept thinking this one, this one, this one, and when her release finally came and she lay gasping beneath him, her body washed in satisfaction, it still wasn’t enough.Draco’s erratic heartbeat pressed against her back and his strained, incoherent muttering fell into her ear, and finally, when he shouted out garbled nonsense over her shoulder in a mix of pleasure and anguish, and his thrusts finally stilled, she knew that he had failed as well.She’d tried. She’d meant for it to work.Hermione maneuvered out from under him and watched his body curl inwards, clutching the throw pillow to his chest. His heartbeat was slowing, though he looked like each breath was a stab in the gut. She wrung her hands and moved to perch on the arm of the chair behind his desk, her loss only tempered by the hope that it could be a delayed reaction.Those other times, when she’d consumed his blood, or when she’d had the potions, she’d been too strung out, too desperate… but in the quiet of the office, with Draco’s stuttered whispers of failure into the pillow, she felt it. A tiny flutter of nerves traveled through her system and sizzled right under her skin, as if it was trying to break free.She tapped her fingers together. The spark was right there, needling her to use it.Let’s put this to the test.Hermione tried a simple Accio. The little bottles clinked together as they rose from the desk, the heaviness within her lifting along with them. Hermione settled the blood renewing potions within Draco’s reach.You could do more…Burns’ warning rang in her ears. Vampires on wizard’s blood felt more powerful than they really were. The false euphoria lay dormant inside her, but as soon as she demanded anything, the magic would rush out like a rude houseguest, leaving the sheets in a mess and the breakfast dishes still on the table.She downed one of the clarifying potions and retrieved her clothes from the floor, carefully arranging the buttons on her blouse. Smoothing down her hair. Refusing to scratch the itch just below her skin.“Going somewhere?” Draco murmured from the couch.“It’s time to fix the thing that broke me,” she said, watching him push himself to a sitting position.“You didn’t feel like you needed fixing,” he rasped, and then coughed and laughed, spittle on his chin. “Felt good,” he said, reaching for her. “Felt better than anything in a long time.”She patted his hand down, more out of shared sympathy than affection, and threw his clothes at him. “Get dressed. Take a potion.” She nodded to the bottles near his head.Her navel tugged at her to… what, exactly? He didn’t look like he needed comforting. He looked like if she gave him a few minutes, he could go for another round. Well, yes. Hermione couldn’t deny that Draco was very, very good at what he did with his clothes off. Easy on the eyes, too. Even so, it hadn’t gotten her what she really, really wanted.She looked back at his pale form, feeling traces of his magic within her, but not feeling anything of hers. It was that same short-lived rush of endorphins, a temporary high of invincibility that would fade as soon as she tried to reach out and claim it as her own.Disappointing.She’d almost said the word out loud and was glad she hadn’t. Bruising egos had never been part of her playbook, and she wasn’t going to start now. Not when it was clear that Draco hadn’t gotten what he’d wanted out of their time together, either.Draco tried to feign indifference, throwing back his potion and using magic to clean himself up. Then he reached for his shirt. Each button was a deliberate move to show how immune he pretended to be to whatever emotional warfare raged inside him. But she caught the brief glance towards the cabinet and knew he wasn’t thinking of the potions.Hermione could still feel the way he’d rammed into her with such deliberation and the delectable way her body had responded. She closed her eyes and let the remembered sensations pass like a breath across her face. When she opened them again, Draco had stopped buttoning and was looking at her. Her senses told her that his renewed interest was merely a mask for his pain.She could Obliviate him. She had the magic within her, and it was his, so why shouldn’t he benefit from it?Oh, Merlin. What a thought that was!Her desire to flex her powers was almost too much to ignore. The only difference between her and any other vampire who had consumed the forbidden blood was that she understood how to use it. But if she allowed herself to lash out with abandon like she had before, it would grab hold and cause her to self-destruct. The whole place could go up in flames.Even then, the magic would not be hers. The part of her that had housed her magic, the inexplicable well where she’d pulled it from within had been destroyed long before she became a vampire.“You’re not going berserk,” Draco said with that half-pained, half-interested glint in his gaze. “I expected the place to go up in smoke afterwards.”She jutted out her chin. “Is that what you wanted?”Hermione felt the chill of his stare, like a cold caress on her skin. If she said the word, he would be willing to try it again and again, as if repetition would lessen his ache. At this point, he had to know it was futile. They could bang into each other as hard and as often as they liked, but they’d still both end up back where they were right now, hurting and disappointed.“Actually, I was hoping you could do me a favor.” Draco had finished dressing and looked as much the part of the calculating dealer that she had come to expect.“Actually,” she said, staring right through him, “I’m busy.”She took the back alley exit without another word, noting the freshly potted plant in the corner. Despite her failure tonight, she’d be back at the Ministry first thing in the morning, with meetings to attend and reports to file. There was also the matter of her backstabbing boss to double cross. And only a day to do it all.But this dream she’d been holding onto for so long had finally died. It had happened just like Burns said. Vampirism had healed her physical deformities, but neither becoming undead nor consuming wizard’s blood reversed dark curses. Apparently, nothing could.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Hermione spent the rest of the night doing what she did best. Being alone in her flat.The next day, she rose with the sun again to make the rest of her arrangements. All the while, the wizard’s blood hummed in her veins and whispered to do things she had no business doing.It started as a small, niggling voice in the back of her head.Accio the files.Hermione walked over to them and picked them up by hand.Transfigure your hair.Hermione ran the brush through her strands and applied her makeup, ignoring the buzzing in her fingertips.There are household spells for that.Hermione set out pellets for Krustus, but he seemed to have vanished during the night. She didn’t blame him.Apparate.Hermione pinched the button between her fingers, and the Portkey deposited her in her office, where she had a brief, but very important meeting with Henry before her boss came in.His eyes had grown wide. She could smell perspiration break out under his robe. But he nodded and agreed and left her office resolute and tight-lipped.And then she walked into the Portkey Regulation Committee meeting without an ounce of weakness. She’d signed Alabastor’s name to the request, compelled them to produce the Portkey immediately, and walked out of the meeting with a small compass tucked in her bag. No one blinked twice.Afterwards, Hermione set her large Muggle bag onto her desk and sighed. Her patience was at an all time low. Her grip on her control was lagging. The wizard’s blood within her kept pushing for more, more, more. She could feast here.Or she could just finish her business.“How was it?” Henry asked, leaning against the door frame in the same manner that he had for so many months. His eyes widened when Hermione opened her bag and set a small glowing compass on her desk, shoving some files aside to make room. “Is that it?” he asked in wonder.“It certainly is.” She sank into her chair and propped her feet up on the desk, careful not to nudge it with her shoe. He nodded and left to prepare his own report.Henry knew about the file. Knew that Draco Malfoy was her contact. Knew about the warehouse and the Prickly Arse Pub. Knew she didn’t have her magic back, but something had changed, because she was no longer concerned about meeting with her boss in fifteen minutes for her status review.Hermione stared at the compass, a little thing, no bigger than a tin of tuna. The green glow had finally faded, and now it looked ordinary, but it was everything she needed to complete her mission. As with anything Hermione Granger did, people took notice. They talked. And in the next second, she found out just how fast the news had traveled.“I’m sorry, I don’t think she’s taking visitors…” she heard Henry calling, and then Ron barged through her office door with the latest copy of the Daily Prophet in his hands.He threw the afternoon edition down onto Hermione’s desk, his face blazing red. She looked down at the sketch of Dr. Metzker plastered on the front cover. “Ministry making deals with the Devil??” and other sensationalized headlines cluttered the page, each article offering a different angle on the situation. Someone had even gotten a picture of her gnarled hand… Hermione glossed over it… it must have been an older picture since her hand didn’t look like that anymore. She skimmed the page for mentions of what she had become, but all she found was conjecture and Skeeter’s usual brand of projecting her own inadequacies onto her victims.Wow, that article had come out fast. She’d been away from the meeting for all of an hour.“Squandered wealth, indeed,” Hermione said under her breath, skimming one of the more ridiculous theories why she would entertain the thought of wizards treating vampires with any amount of respect. They were killers by nature. Why would the Ministry even stoop to their level? What was she going to do next, lobby for Decency for Dementors?Merpeople didn’t care what wizards thought of them. The Centaurs wanted nothing to do with two-legged creatures. Why was she, as something other than a wizard, trying so hard to placate an organization that wasn’t interested in anyone’s agenda besides their own? Why was she so bent on including these beings in a system that refused to make a place for them?The Wizarding World had once seemed like a marvelous, magical place. Now she knew even wizards couldn’t fully fathom the depth and breadth and otherness of what was truly magical. They weren’t interested in anything they couldn’t control. They even had a derogatory name for it.When she looked back up, Ron was still seething.“They’re monsters, Hermione. How did it come to this?”Hermione knew exactly how it had come to this. As much as she wanted to tell Ron that this was none of his business, not his department, and would he please keep his nose out of her life, he, and every sane person alive, had every right to question her sanity on this.Every printed word had left her skin crawling.She’d become the thing she was fighting against. Of all the prejudices and discrimination that the Ministry had—of all the things she was working so hard to correct from within the system, they had gotten this one right. No one with any sense of reason would give vampires a fair footing within the Wizengamot. Even the vampire’s enforcers were against participation in a transparent government. If word got out what these things… what she… was capable of, they would be feared, banned, exterminated.They were the demons and the nightmares. Everything that was wrong with the world.Ron had every right to be upset with her. If she was in his shoes, she’d be upset, too. The line had been crossed, and there was no turning back. Especially since she had sprinted another mile beyond it.He would taste very satisfying.Hermione shook herself away from the memory of her vivid dream involving Ron’s last breath. “You need to leave. I have a meeting in five minutes.”“Alright, we can talk about this later.”Think of the rush. The power. Can’t you smell how delicious he would be?“No, Ron. I’m not explaining myself to you.”“You’re killing your career.”Gringus Alabastor had already done that, but she would not bring that sore point up right now. Ron would find out soon enough. But the one thing that irked her over all of this was the unspoken idea that Ron didn’t think she could handle the situation.“What if I told you I was providing transportation for a Squib?”“That’s not what this is about…” Light dawned in Ron’s eyes and his expression softened. “Of course that would be appropriate.”He put a hand on her cheek, distracting her by his proximity. She hadn't let him this close to her in ages. The vein in his wrist throbbed next to her skin. She resisted the whispers that told her to suck him dry.Delicious…She needed to get his pulse point away from her face, so she raised her voice a notch.“And what if I suddenly became a werewolf and needed a Portkey?”Ron dropped his hand. “The Ministry has policies in place for that,” he agreed, frowning. “Look at Tonks and Remus. They made it work.” His hand came up again, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, and she stared into his eyes, searching for her next words, which she found easily.Damnit, but he was too close again. She spoke louder, this time. “Remus the werewolf. Is that what you’re comparing me to now?”Ron’s face morphed into mortification. “No!” he sputtered. “You were the one who brought up werewolves. I didn’t mean…”Hermione increased her volume another notch, and this time, he did take a step away from her. “And what if I became a vampire? What if I was bitten during an encounter? Would you deny me the ability to travel by Portkey?”“Be serious, Hermione.”“What would you do?” she said, even louder. She was sure Henry could hear them through the door.Ron was looking at her now as if she was defying some kind of wizarding law. “If a vampire attacked you, I’d hunt down that monster and slaughter him.”“And me?”Ron shook his head. “Believe me, Hermione. If someone sucked the blood out of you, you’d be dead, not turned.”“You don’t think I could handle being a vampire? Is that what you’re saying?”“I’m saying that you need to be careful because they’re powerful and dangerous and can’t be trusted. It’s like trying to reason with an Acromantula.” Ron’s volume matched her own. They were both louder than the walls could muffle. “Monsters are monsters. Some things don’t belong in the civilized world!”His pulse was loud, his face was flushed, and he smelled like Thai food.Eat him…Hermione surprised them both by shoving him away from her. He was too tired to be irritable, too surprised to find his words, so she found them for him.“You will not tell me what to do, or what I am and am not capable of. Not in my office,” she said, sounding too snappy for someone standing in a professional capacity.Ron reached out to touch her arm reassuringly, but she pulled away. If the truth ever got out, he’d remember that she’d at least tried to tell him.“You're going to be the death of me yet,” he said, collapsing into the visitor’s chair in a familiar fashion.Well, no. Hermione was actively trying to prevent that from happening. She wasn’t mad. She knew he was right; it was just… he didn’t need to be so close—hovering— when she had urges, needs. The remaining wizard’s blood still hummed within her veins, but she felt the rise of the impulse within her to reach for more. It was right there…The last thing she wanted was Ron’s blood on her hands, and everywhere else, and then she had to mentally step back and regroup from that thought because suddenly it became too real, too possible… too inevitable. He was right. Some things couldn’t be controlled. She needed him out of her life before he found out just how right he was.She cleared her expression, reached out and patted his shoulder to soften the blow. He was looking more and more like an easy target, fallen prey… a delicious snack…“Look, I had a very long day, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life arguing with you.”Hermione hadn’t meant for that to come out that way, but it was too late to take it back.Ron’s lip twitched. “What are you saying?”“Please,” she said as her throat started getting that dry, constricted feeling. “You need to leave me alone. Maybe there will be a time when we can be friends again.”“Friends?” He stood up, towering over her desk. Anyone else would consider him intimidating in that posture, tense back, intense gaze, gripping his wand under his sleeve. When he got that way, when he used his Auror training to his advantage, that was the moment when Ron reminded her of everything that she had once been. Strong. Resilient. Magical. “I thought this was temporary. I thought we were… that you still…”She wasn’t intimidated. She was just…“I’m sorry.”There she went, apologizing for something that wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It just was. If he didn’t leave now, she’d sink her teeth into him, show him how much she could handle being what she was… how much she’d actually changed... and then they’d both have something to be sorry for.Hermione hardly had a life to speak of, no magic, no heartbeat. His hot and heady pulse picked up, and she smelled it, pulling at her to come closer.He didn’t deserve to be treated like Draco Malfoy.She backed away. “I should have been more clear before. Don’t come here again. Don’t visit my flat. There is nothing left between us.”“You don’t mean that,” he said.“I do,” she said. “I really do. I should have done this ages ago, but I didn’t know how.”“How did this become about us? I thought we were talking about the Ministry and monsters. I still care about you. I want to help you in any way I can.”“I know. And believe me, you’ve helped enough. I have to figure out who I am,” she said. “Without you. We cannot be anything anymore.”A pained expression crossed his face, but she wasn’t going to let him turn this into a personal pity party. She wanted to say something else, something that would mark the finality of the moment, but her words had run out.For a long moment, his expression fluctuated between sadness and guilt. Then resignation. Then anger, and then sadness again. Wordlessly, he reached into his pocket and put the spare key to her flat on the desk. Then he walked to her door, opened it, and left her office. The tang of his blood hung in the air where he had stood.Through the open doorway, Henry poked his head in. It was clear he’d heard everything. “Alright there, Granger?”“Not really,” she said softly. “Why?”“That was rough,” Henry stated.“Yeah,” she agreed.“I know you had to do it, but did you have to be so…”“What, Henry?”“Did you have to be so predatory about it?”Hermione’s instincts prickled at the jab. But she didn’t answer the question. She didn’t know if Henry had figured out that she’d turned into one of them, or if he just accepted her need to leave on her own terms. One of the many things she appreciated about Henry was that he never offered platitudes.He rapped his knuckles on the door frame. “The boss is ready for you.”Hermione met the eyes of her assistant. “Remember what we talked about.”Henry nodded. “Gemino,” he said to the files on her desk. Hermione picked up the copies, and Henry went back to his desk with the originals.Her boss’s door was open. She could hear the shuffling of papers inside. It was time to face her future.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Did you get it?”Gringus Alabastor sat behind his massve oak desk, eyes drilling straight into her like a sphinx demanding answers to an impossible riddle. That look used to cause her to turn back around and revise whatever proposition she had brought into his office twice more before facing him again. But it had been a damned long week. A week of hell, if she put it mildly, that she’d forced herself through on his behalf. The least he could offer was a, “Hello,” or, “Good afternoon,” or any other nicety.But no. Screw respect and office etiquette.Oooh look. Another snack. You could close the door and…Hermione ground the heels of her pumps into the floor, ignoring the urge to do anything of the sort with Draco’s magic zinging under her skin. Though her boss’s attitude made her toes curl in the worst possible way, it didn’t mean he deserved to bleed.You wouldn’t even have to close the door. What would payback taste like? It might be just the thing you need…“Granger, do you have what I need?”Hermione fixed her stare at a spot just over her boss’s head, trying to formulate professional, reasonable words that wouldn’t turn this meeting into a full-blown confrontation. She forced herself to address him with her eyes, noting that he looked the way he always had. Impatient. Bothered. Self-satisfied.He had expected her to fail.She set the singular file on top of the papers he obviously thought were more important than hers, refusing to take the chair. It was gratifying to look down on him across the desk, arms folded in front of her chest. Assessing his reaction as he slowly opened the folder and read her findings.By page two, Alabastor’s face turned so pale that he came close to resembling his namesake. Hermione watched with satisfaction as he got exactly what he’d asked for. Names and dates of the blood potion deliveries. The source of the deliveries had been linked to The Prickly Arse Pub, but not specifically to Draco Malfoy, who was smart enough to keep his name out of the records. The list of names obviously checked off as Muggles assimilated into the coven had been directly associated with Dr. Metzker and her business address, along with a string of memos linking the use of the warehouse to her name. Hermione had even penned a full summary, with bullet points and footnotes and multicolored tabs that linked each of her findings to a different set of pages that laid out, in plain words, the hard evidence for her conclusions.Gringus Alabastor pointed a disbelieving finger at the list of Muggle names. “Where did you get this?”“Page twenty-one,” Hermione said.He leafed through the stack of parchment for a silent five minutes. The only reaction was the movement of his eyebrows as he read. It was all there, clearly stated, that vampires were responsible for the missing Muggles. The only document Hermione had omitted was the piece of paper implicating her boss’s tie to Metzker, which, by his frantic flipping, he was clearly searching for.A copy of The Daily Prophet lay on his desk—the early morning edition, not the mid-morning addendum that Ron had overreacted to, which worked to Hermione’s benefit. If Alabastor hadn’t gotten wind of her activities in Portkey Regulations that morning, it’d be more of a surprise when she made her next move.He cleared his throat several times and then closed the file. She could see the prepared speech reforming itself in his head as he tried to regain a footing on the situation that had clearly not gone his way. “This is a start. Not enough to secure your position at the Ministry, though.”“Not enough?” Hermione’s voice rose dangerously close to an unprofessional volume. If she had been an Auror, they would have awarded another medal for this sort of intelligence. But she wasn’t an Auror, and she had learned, quite recently in fact, that Gringus Alabastor was not the type of wizard who applied anything she gave him towards administering fair justice.For just a moment, Hermione imagined finding Metzker, chopping her head off, and slamming it onto Alabastor’s desk. Her fangs wanted to drop. Her fingers itched to reach across the desk and pick him up by his robes.Think, Hermione. Think about the agenda your boss is shoving down everyone’s throat around here.Isolationism. Distrust. Fear. Don’t feed into that. Besides, you need him to think he’s still in control.Right.Hermione eased her shoulders back and relaxed her stance. Gringus Alabastor coughed softly as he opened the file again. “We could petition for more time from Human Resources to see if these leads pan out. That would give you a softer transition into Muggle life. Two weeks sounds fair enough as you transfer everything to your replacement.”Replacement. Transition. Fair enough.He was saying he needed to keep her around long enough for him to figure out whether she knew of his involvement and how he was going to keep her quiet about it. Hermione internally scoffed at the idea of Gringus Alabastor offering her anything of value at this point. Her boss was going through the motions of a slow gear-grinding bureaucracy, taking the steps as her supervisor to set her up for permanent dismissal.Like Metzker, he’d put in a great deal of effort into stringing her along. He’d expertly played on her independent nature so she wouldn’t complain or blow the whistle, until he had the opportunity to quit playing the hide-Hermione’s-disability-under-the-shifting-cups game.Apparently, his superiors were through with her too, because no one was rushing in to save her. This was what she’d dreaded, the thing that haunted her dreams, the day that the Ministry of Magic decided her service was no longer needed, and she had become irrelevant.As Alabastor continued to turn pages, Hermione turned around and walked calmly back to her office. She started putting framed photos into her bag. Memories that had once meant the world to her were now part of a world she no longer belonged to.She would not take the two weeks. It had all gone down just as they’d expected.Henry leaned against the doorframe, the one he was always seeming to hold up with his weight, trying not to be seen. She looked up and stared with impassive eyes, a trick she’d learned from Burns that caused even the most tight-lipped people to start talking.One. Two. Three.Henry shifted his weight on the doorframe. “You okay?”She smiled and flipped through a small pad containing notes on the pixies, then tossed it back onto her desk. “I’ll be fine. How about you?”Henry looked as green as when he’d opened the thank you gift of pickled plimpies from the merepeople. “I always wanted to do what you do. Have a job that makes a difference. I wanted to learn from you, from the best, but I never wanted it like this.”The guilt written all over Henry’s face would not stop him from sliding into her seat while it was still warm. In their impromptu meeting that morning, she had encouraged him to do exactly that. If she were in his shoes, she’d do the same thing.“Changing the rules makes people around you uncomfortable. No one likes being uncomfortable, Henry,” Hermione said, unable to keep the bitterness out of her tone.“I really do,” he said. “Want to make a difference, I mean. That's why I applied to this department.”Hermione stuffed her quill into her bag, thought better of it, and set it back on the desk. It felt right to leave the tools of her trade behind. Strange, now that the worst had happened, that her own gut was filled with an overwhelming sense of relief. As if this job she had held so close to her chest had been holding her in the wrong place for far too long.“Has he read it?” Henry thumbed through the original file in his hand.“He’s going through it now,” she confirmed. “Make sure they’re here before he breaks for lunch.”Henry nodded, tapping the file against his leg. “I’ll walk this down to the office myself.”“I would say good luck, but you’ve got everything you need.” Satisfied with the few things she packed, she slung her bag over her shoulder, pushed past him and made to leave the suite when he called out.“Hermione.”She turned back to look at Henry, whose small smile vanished under the strain of his next move. She wasn’t sure Henry had ever been to the Auror’s Department, but she was absolutely sure that he’d be fine once he arrived. He tipped the file towards her in a salute.“Thanks.”Hermione nodded in return before pushing through the door. Heading towards the lifts, she passed through the chatter of her co-workers in their respective office suites for the last time. Once Henry delivered the file, the evidence of Alabastor’s involvement with rogue vampires would have the Aurors knocking on her boss’s door in minutes, ready to take him in for questioning about the missing Muggles. Hopefully, by the end of next week, Henry would get his much deserved promotion, and Gringus Alabastor would spend his early retirement in Azkaban.As she stopped in front of the lifts, something prickled along her chin. Hermione pressed a hand against her cheek, feeling her face grow hot and her gums prick. Heat tugged at her chest to… to go somewhere, and she quickly veered towards the loo. She couldn’t let her fangs drop here, not inside the Ministry building for all to see. Burns hadn’t told her anything about whatever this sensation might be. But then, Burns hadn’t told her much to begin with.Disgruntled again by her apparent mentor’s apparent lack of communication, Hermione pushed through the lavatory door, turned on the faucet and splashed water on her face. Droplets rolled from her cheeks into the sink as she stared into the mirror at the loo stalls behind her, noticing every crack in the old grey paint of the doors and the rust on the hinges. Everyone had reported the broken latch on the second stall from the wall, but no one had bothered to fix it.When she’d had magic, Hermione had not raised her wand to fix it either, thinking it wasn’t her job—that someone responsible in the repair department would do it. She’d taken magic for granted, and now she wasn’t even capable of fixing a loo stall latch. Within the walls of the Ministry of Magic, she was well and truly irrelevant.Instigating the fall of her superior was not the legacy she had imagined. Of all the things she would be remembered for… it wouldn’t be the social reforms with the house-elves or the werewolves, but the scandal she would cause by leaving.The wheels in the cog would still turn as they always had, and the Wizarding World would go on believing that it had the right to issue policies and mandates regarding beasts and beings they had no control over and couldn’t—wouldn’t—make any effort to understand. But Henry would continue to fight the injustices of the underrepresented in her place. Maybe he would push the reforms farther than she ever had.Hermione splashed more water on her face, then tore some paper from the roll and patted her skin, checking in the mirror for… all she could see was the broken latch behind her. Ah, even her reflection had abandoned her.Her mouth hung limp as she let the puffs of air escape from her body. Pressing her fingers to her teeth, she felt the smooth gumline. Whatever that sensation had been, it was gone now. Her shoulders shook uncontrollably. It took her a full minute to realize that she was laughing, and when she did, she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t confirm it in the mirror properly, but she imagined the insanity of how she must look. The water continued to spray into the sink as she laughed into the empty mirror.A clerk from Transportation Records came in, and Hermione didn’t try to hide herself. “I just heard from Henry,” the clerk said. “Are you…”Okay? Am I?She turned and faced the woman, almost laughing again at the aghast expression on her face, clutching the Hallows symbol hanging from a chain around her neck. Hermione imagined her own face having a wild tinge of hysteria by the way her co-worker cleared her throat and backed away to let her pass.Watch me, she said wordlessly to anyone who dared to look at her as she marched back to the lifts. Watch me do all the things you were afraid I’d do.She’d forged her boss’s signature. She had stood in front of the Wizengamot in his name and demanded a Portkey for a rogue vampire hunted by the Council that the Wizarding World was not supposed to interfere with. She’d put the signed forms in the original file that Henry carried to the Auror’s Department.Gringus Alabastor would be deposed, and Henry, not her, would be the youngest wizard to hold a Head of Office position in the Ministry of Magic. Someone down the line would call it payback or revenge or some other excuse for her unprofessional actions. They’d never know what she had become.For an entire year she had played the part of Hermione Granger, hard-working advocate for change. She’d hoped against hope that if she worked hard enough, if she produced enough value in this world, the people around her would one day give a Dementor’s arse about Hermione Granger, the wounded and broken.Well, she could stop doing all of that now.The lift doors opened, and Hermione stepped inside, still laughing. Its sound reflected off the mirrors and tiles, bouncing and contorting into a maddening cackle around her.Let them think I’ve gone mad, she thought as she caught her breath and laughed again as the lift doors closed around her. Mad is all I’ve been for as long as I can remember.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Through the large glass walls in Dr. Metzker’s office, another day bled into night.Hermione returned from the adjoining office loo where she had thoroughly washed her hands of her past. She might have missed a bit here and there, but it would all swirl down the drain soon enough. She eyed the small shiny compass sitting on Dr. Metzker’s desk, its needle whirling round and round.Dr. Metzker had sensed the magic on the item and immediately ushered her into the office.Now that she had her therapist’s undivided attention, Hermione was ready to dig into all of her unresolved issues. Taking a seat across from her, she rested her hands on her knees and looked directly into Dr. Metzker’s unblinking eyes.“I got through my entire day at the Ministry without drinking more wizard’s blood,” she said, using the chirpy tone usually reserved for people who had gotten under her skin in the wrong way. Hermione considered shifting to a more professional tone, but this unhindered voice seemed more honest for the near hysteria she had experienced that afternoon. She shrugged and went on. “I’d call it the first victory of my new life.”In Alabastor’s office, the voices telling her to do things had clamored in her ears. Using the magic to apparate to Metzker’s office reduced them to mere whispers. The sudden flurry of physical exertion she’d used moments ago had silenced the voices completely. The crash from depleting the magic reserves inside of her would likely hit hard in about an hour, but it would only be after she came down from the high of her accomplishments.Whatever that weird sensation was that had come over her in the Ministry hallway, it hadn’t returned.Meanwhile, Hermione had things to report. She brought out her notebook and opened it with a flourish. “I did my homework. Oh, rats.” Hermione dug in her bag and pulled out a felt-tip pen.“Confront my boss, check.” She made the exaggerated motion of checking the item off her list.“Break things off permanently with Ron. Also, check.” Hermione made another flourish, and the pen cap flipped off the end and smacked into the corner, clattering to the floor.“Redefine my life, starting with my career.”She tapped the pen thoughtfully on her lip, deliberating her drastic shift from fear-of-failure to who-gives-a-fuck. It probably wasn’t what her therapist meant by changing her attitude, but spending time with Draco Malfoy was bound to have repercussions. She checked off the item and moved on.“Embrace change. Big. Fat. Check. That’s my short list. Pretty good, don’t you think?”Hermione snapped the notebook shut and threw the pen into the wastebasket where it rattled around. As the noise died, she snapped her gaze back to the desk. “The wizard’s blood has a big kick. I can see why you were feeding it to your coven. Pig’s blood cuts the cravings from the fallout after, did you know that?”She pushed the words out in a rush, not stopping for a response. “Oh, I’m sure you already did. I learned a lot from you.”Hermione gazed around Dr. Metzker’s office, and her eyes fell on the doctor’s notes splayed open, a bit of splatter across them, but still legible. Details on how she’d studied the Ministry personnel files were marked with her therapist’s stilted handwriting in the margins, dates and times and meetings with Alabastor. One said, “Coffee?” with the question mark circled several times. One said, “dropped business card”, which probably meant that was the day Hermione had found the card in her inbox, conveniently allowing her to find Metzker at her lowest point.It was unclear how Metzker had gotten into the Ministry, or how she’d tagged Alabastor as a target, but her other manipulations had been meticulously logged. The encouragement for Hermione to move to Muggle London away from her support group was very damning. Hermione didn’t need this information, except to satisfy her own curiosity. Gringus Alabastor’s career had already been ground to dust under the wheels of the Knight Bus. But it was nice to be thorough. Not every patient got to see the file their doctor kept on them.“Accepting circumstances, that’s what you taught me, right? It feels so good to embrace who I really am. And I’ve only been a full vampire for, how long has it been?” She turned around and checked the wall clock. “Oh, almost a full day.”Steep learning curve aside, Hermione felt like she might have earned top marks in becoming a vampire. She’d learned how to feed. She’d discovered the speed and strength that came with her new abilities. She’d also performed her first act of revenge.“I didn’t want to admit it, but you were right,” she told her deathly silent therapist. “I needed to embrace who I really was before I could accomplish my goals.”She rapped twice on the desk the way she’d seen her boss do many times when he was sealing a deal or had just made a Very Important Point.The severed head rolled sideways, and Hermione reached out and propped it back up against the diagonal lean of her therapist’s name plate. She braced it between a winged foot of a Hermes paperweight and the answering machine. There. It was better to look someone in the eyes when one was trying to be sincere.“You’d be proud of me,” she said. “I’ve stopped apologizing for who I am. I’m certainly not apologizing for this.”The severed head did not look like it would care if an apology was forthcoming. Hermione should get used to seeing people like this. Blood everywhere, and a stiff, lifeless body on the floor.“But I hope you realize that if I’d been a witch with active magic, I’d probably be dead by now, along with half of the Wizengamot. Of course, you probably knew that, and that’s what made me the perfect target.”It had made Metzker a perfect target, too, giving Hermione an excellent opportunity to try out that Sectumsempra to remove her head just before the last of her magic had run dry. For the record, it was just as horrifying as her friend had described it. She hadn’t meant to cause Metzker’s head to roll, but the Council would have shown the woman far less mercy.Her bag buzzed. Hermione ignored it and stared into Metzker’s lifeless eyes.“I do have one question. This prickly feeling at the base of my neck came out of nowhere, and I’ve been trying to figure out why all afternoon. It went away, but now it’s traveling down my spine, as if it’s trying to tug me towards something. Is this another vampire thing, or…”Her bag buzzed again. “Excuse me,” Hermione said, digging into her bag. She brought out the pager and stared at the unknown number scrolling across the tiny screen. She waited until the identifying letters appeared.“…PRICKLY…ARSE…”Damned doxies. Draco Malfoy would have to wait. She had brought everything, and she was going to finish what she started.She dug into her bag again, bringing out a small sherry glass and lifted the small bottle of something dark and red off the desk. She poured herself a drink and held it into the air.“Ah, well. No more time for questions, I suppose. Here’s to you, Dr. Metzker,” she toasted to the monster who’d made her. The woman who’d given Hermione her strength back. The woman who’d given her a reason to make her own path in the world.Hermione put the glass to her lips. The tang hit her tongue, and a small hum of satisfaction warmed her throat. The last of Draco’s potions from the back of Metzker’s drawer sang in her veins.She set the glass down, deciding that she’d had enough of that. Her work here was done.The truth really did set one free. She knew things about herself that she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge until now.For example, her magic wasn’t broken.Her soul was.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Draco Malfoy understood cravings well. He was caught up in one right now. He tried to readjust his attitude in the mirror's reflection behind the bar, but there was nothing to be done about the sallow appearance staring back at him, a veritable stranger, pale and gaunt with sunken, unhealthy eyes. His skin crawled at the sight.As he had feared, the barkeep wanted him to triple blood potion production in the coming weeks. By Draco’s calculations, it would take a full poker table of magical beings strung out on blood replenishing potions for weeks to fill that order.Draco had lived under the black thumb of oppression all his life, but this was too much. His heart wasn’t black enough to force a group of wizards to hand over their free will for the privilege of becoming long-term blood donors, and even if he could muster up the apathy to do it once, the barkeep would have him do it again. And again. The half second that he seriously considered complying with the barkeep’s demand had pushed him far too close to the edge of his permanently shredded morality.He shoved his self-loathing down and proceeded behind the bar and through the swinging doors, a place he rarely had a reason to visit. Most times, whenever he needed something, it was delivered to him on a silver platter.He eyed the pitted steel serving trays stacked in the corner. Or at least a platter.Sometimes it came in a half-litre mug or a glass of ice.Anyway, the important thing was that the barkeep was out, the kitchen was empty, and the larder was unlocked.Well, after a well-placed Alohomora, it was. Draco walked into the room-sized pantry and looked at the neat rows of kitchen supplies. The usual suspects stared back at him. Flour. Sugar. Honey. Eggs.Below the food items, an entire shelf was dedicated to litre sized bottles of viscous liquid. His eyes roamed over the labels.Virgin Olive OilCold Pressed Extra Virgin Olive OilHis gaze dropped to the shelf underneath containing tightly wrapped packages coated in cooling charms.Virginia smoked hamShite, there was a lot of virgin stuff in here.He grabbed a bag of salt, a cellophane wrapped package of what he assumed were ‘virgin candles’, and a box of hearth matches that had nothing to do with virgins. Then he elbowed the door closed and hurried to the back office before the staff came to open for the evening.Draco felt like a child sneaking out for a beer run with the boys. He’d done just that over the summer between fourth and fifth year. Sure, he could have gotten the house-elves to supply a keg from anywhere in the world, but sneaking out of Malfoy Manor with his friends and gaining it for themselves… That had been the biggest part of the fun.Also, the bigger part of his downfall. His father had caught all of them rolling a stolen keg from the local pub down into the cellar. Crabbe and Goyle had been stone cold frozen when the doors burst open and the lecture of their lives began, and then they sagged against the wall in relief when the doors had locked them in the cellar for the night as punishment with no hex marks to speak of.It was a good night, as he recalled. They’d had an entire keg for company and no one to disturb them.Draco closed the door to his office and set everything down on his desk, heaving a sigh of relief that the barkeep hadn’t popped out of nowhere and condemned him for stealing the three pounds of salt and tucking tapered candles under his robe. Surely, the man wouldn’t harm an innocent Mediwitch for the minor offense of lifting a few items from the kitchen.He couldn’t be sure of anything having to do with the barkeep. He didn’t even know his name.If his plan went off the way he imagined it, he wouldn’t have to worry about the nightmare of a man for much longer. He didn’t know how or why, but Hermione Granger had found the secret to being a Magical Vampire. In short order, by fuck all, she was going to share it with him. Then, together, they’d take care of the bloke who put a stain on his soul and forced him to choose between being the man Astoria wanted him to be and the man who kept damning himself to keep her alive.Something in the back of his head niggled him about the fact that his plan was bound to be more complicated than he imagined, but he would do anything… anything to end the constant hell he put himself through. It was obvious from his trip to St. Mungo’s that Astoria hadn’t given up on him, and that knowledge had ripped all his wounds back open.When he saw Astoria standing over Granger’s bed, doing everything in her power to save the woman he’d brought her because she thought he’d finally found something of greater value than himself, everything bled raw. Stupidly, instead of seizing the moment to beg for her forgiveness, he had turned around and pimped himself out again right afterward.He had kept himself going for over a year with her name dripping off his tongue in his sleep and running through his veins. Every time he made another deal, tainted another bag with his own blood, he saw her face and the disappointment on it. But he couldn’t live another day knowing that Astoria Greengrass was still waiting for him to change.If the barkeep remained in control of Draco’s life, things would only get worse.He wasn’t even going to ask Astoria’s forgiveness this time. That bridge was well burnt and charred. And now, he was going to tear it all down for good.Damnation was a fair price to pay.Astoria, if you are the angel I think you are, please hear my prayer that you are kept safe from my stupidity, and if I had to do it all over again…If Draco could go back in time, would any of it have turned out differently?With his luck, he’d go back and run his life even farther into the ground. He couldn’t guess how, but that was usually what happened. Whatever he could imagine, it’d be ten times worse. A hundred times worse.Yeah, it was better not to take chances, and fix the shite situation in front of him the best he could.Draco took stock of his contraband inventory. Candles. Salt. Those fancy fireplace matches with the long-as-your-hard-on sticks. And the handbound leather spell book from his aunt’s special collection. Draco didn’t know the story behind the little black book, but he’d found it in that cellar all those years ago when the keg had run dry. After he and his friends had pissed in every corner because there was no fucking privy in the dungeon, they’d stumbled on a small altar, probably to he-who-had-fucked-up-Draco’s-life, where his aunt had left one of her personal items behind in her rush to go out and serve the Dark Fucker.And Draco, being more than tipsy and less than honest, and a hell of a lot damned upset with his father about punishing his friends, though not upset at being unbothered for the evening, (except for the absence of a privy), had nicked it.Call it spite.Call it immaturity.Call it a cry for help from a young chap who had no shield against the atrocities occurring under his own roof.He was glad of it now.Could have done without the atrocities, though.He flipped open the little book to the page he’d been studying. Most of the pages were stained in blood, but the one he needed was clear enough. He knew fucking Latin. He’d been chanting it under his breath all day.Then he looked over the symbol on the next page and grabbed the salt. Slitting the top, he poured the symbol out onto the new rug, muttering under his breath over and over. Draco felt ice coat his tongue. He knew enough about Dark Magic to know when it activated. And by Salazar’s untrimmed toenails, he had activated it.As long as he was alive, the vampires would keep coming and he would keep providing them with his blood until he died. Self preservation was the only thing keeping him going. That, and an unflinching desire to suffer for his sins for as long as he could.What had all of Draco’s suffering been for if not survival?With the salt symbol finished, he set down the near-empty bag and stepped back to check the scale of his work.“Cheers,” he muttered, swigging down one of his special potions. As advertised on the handwritten label, all of his worries vanished. This would help him with his nerves. It would help both of them, she’d see. One small favor for the big one he was about to demand.Resuming the chant, he placed the candles around the symbol, lit one, and then settled back on his expensive couch to wait for his savior to arrive.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Why had she come here, exactly?Hermione was momentarily taken aback by how assured Draco seemed, sitting… no, lounging on his expensive sofa in his renovated office, looking at her like he knew she would come.He already had half of his buttons undone, showing off the two puncture scars in the soft skin under his chin. She had put those there. That strange tugging sensation reappeared, drawing her towards him. The longer she was in this room, the more she wanted to sink her teeth back into him again.Hermione’s mind whirled with indignation. This plimpysucking scumbag, the one who’d spouted for years about the uselessness of Muggles, had gone through the trouble of using a Muggle telephone to send her a message. She hadn’t even paid him for her last visit. Why in Merlin’s name did he want to see her again?Willing herself to turn back towards the door, she face-planted against an invisible barrier and shot a glare at the man on the sofa. The last person who’d manipulated her had just ended up beheaded. Suddenly, the idea of killing Draco Malfoy for luring and trapping her here under some kind of wizarding hold was pretty damned appealing.“You’ve put locking wards around the room. Why?”Draco twirled his wand in his hand with a self-satisfying grin on his face. Oh, yes, he’d definitely done something. Amidst all the blood drinking and debauchery of the last few days, she’d forgotten how powerful of a wizard he was. If she’d had her own magic, or any of his left in her system, she could have easily broken through whatever this was, but she had no reserves left.“You’ve figured it out,” he said, sounding deranged. “You are the answer to everything.”He waved an arm over the dragon lamps, and their flames lowered, casting eerie shadows on the walls. He snatched a candle off the floor, lit it from the lamp, and bent forward to light another candle.Hermione looked down and saw the rest of it. Her feet refused to move, rooted to the center of a salt circle with a complex woven border, surrounded by candles. Her mind flashed to the horrific memory of the warehouse... the woman… Dr. Metzker, holding a candle and beckoning her to come inside.The ritual.“How do you know about this?” she asked.“I read a lot,” he said, lighting another candle. Then he paused and picked up a small black book. Hermione’s nostrils flared as the scent of dark magic surrounded her. That book should be locked up in the Department of Mysteries, not spread open by the hands of a desperate wizard. Draco’s lips moved silently as he continued around the circle.None of Hermione’s books had mentioned vampire rituals or half-turning, or anything else she’d experienced first-hand about being a vampire. The logical part of her brain knew that it didn’t matter how inaccurate her sources had been. Even if she had the proper information, it would have changed nothing. She had fully turned. There was no going back.But this was ridiculous. Draco Malfoy was not a vampire. Trapping her in his office and performing this ritual wouldn’t do him any good.“What are you going to do, Draco? Drink my blood?”He gave her a helpless, wanting smile. “You’re going to drink mine.”A shiver ran down her spine that had nothing to do with being a vampire and everything to do with Draco’s nefarious intentions as he circled her like a hyena. “I’m sure as Merlin’s white robe not going to agree to turn you.”Draco pinned her with a dark look. “My whole life, I never agreed to do anything. I was a slave to my childhood, and people have the audacity to blame me for it, as if I had a choice. You have something I want, and I’ve decided to take it.”“You don’t want what I have.”“You’re powerful, and you get to live forever. How bad can that be?”“No wizard becomes a vampire. That’s crazy. You’ll go insane.” Draco was probably close to insanity now, if he was willing to go through something as desperate as this, but Hermione felt like saying that out loud would be splitting hairs.“You didn’t turn batshite… well, that one time where you…” His eyes glazed over. “Blood everywhere…” Then he blinked the memory away, unfazed. He was on a potion cocktail again, she could tell now. “Anyway, that was a one-off, and you recovered. You can teach me how to be a wizard and a vampire without the dire consequences.”“I can’t.”“You will.”Hermione pressed against the barrier again, but it wouldn’t give. “I’m not a witch.”“What.. but you… This summons specifically works for whom it’s made. You can’t be Polyjuiced. You’re Hermione Granger, the Wizarding World’s golden child.”“I lost my magic in the war to a stray curse. It might not even have been meant for me, but no one will ever know. I’ve hidden it for over a year. Do you think that if I had an ounce of magic, that I’d still be standing here? I haven’t been a witch in a long time.”She hadn’t ever admitted it out loud before. The words came easier now that none of it mattered.A look of uncertainty ran across Draco’s expression. Then, like a passing shadow, his face cleared. He stepped into the circle. “That’s why you didn’t apparate away that night when the vampires came.”She resisted staggering towards him. “You don’t want to do this.”“What do you know about what I want? I may not have had a choice before, but I do now.”“You have something that I will never have again. I envy you for that.”He scoffed. “You can’t be serious. Whatever could I have that’s so precious to you?”“Your humanity.”The candle wavered in his hand. “Little good that does me.”“It does you a lot of good, Draco Malfoy. You still have the chance to make your life better.”“I don’t have a life!” He shoved the candle into the empty sconce on the floor, completing the circle.The entire circle of candles flared up, and Hermione felt the irresistible tug in her navel. Damn Draco Malfoy for his potions prowess. Damn Draco for his knowledge of the Dark Arts.She didn’t want to tear his shirt off. She didn’t want to wrap her fingers around his neck and bend him to her will. And she didn’t want to give in to the sudden cravings that grabbed her by her own throat and forced her to lean towards the throbbing pulse point on his neck.He sank to his knees before her. “I don’t care what else I’ll lose. I’ve already paid the price of my soul three times over,” he whispered, exposing his neck. “I know what I’m asking.”“No,” she said, trying to fight the urge to lick at his collarbone. “You really don’t.”Hermione felt her fangs drop and tried to tear her gaze away from his bruised skin. Unshed tears burned behind her eyes as she grabbed Draco and sank her fangs into his flesh, feeling the pull of his magical blood rush into her body. It didn’t shock her when his head lolled back and his eyes rolled into his skull. She wasn’t disgusted by the eager way he clutched her head and pressed her into him, but she should be.In the back of her mind, the dream that had played out with Ron flared to life. He’d been in almost this same position, desperate to please her, desperate to give his life for her.Even as blood coated her mouth, she struggled to regain control, but whatever spell she was under held her in place, as strong as an Imperius Curse. Hermione wracked her brain… there was a defense for that… resist… sheer will… fight the urge…Draco’s whispering faded to nothing, and she finally was able to tear herself away, blood dripping off her chin. His lips had gone still, breath coming in shallow puffs, his eyes shuttered closed. Whatever he cast had released her when he’d stopped chanting and now she sensed he was brushing with death because of her.The wizard’s blood surged within her. Her body wanted more. She could take it all. She could finish him now. He wouldn’t protest or struggle or try to stop her, either.Whatever reasons Draco had for being her personal blood bank, they had nothing to do with her. He wasn’t dying for her. Draco just wanted to die. And then he wanted to become like her. Or that’s what he thought he wanted, anyway.Magic blood pounded through her system, the craving and desire making her lean over him and dive back in. She drank until his whole body sagged, and finally, finally, broke free.He was barely breathing, eyes closed, body limp as if he’d been pulled from the bottom of the Black Lake. She fought through the whispers that started up in her head, urging her to use the power that sparked in her fingertips. Instead, she set his prone form on the rug and picked up the small book. Maybe Draco hadn’t read the part where she was supposed to give him her blood after she had taken nearly all of his. Or maybe he had, and not taken the time to prepare another spell to compel her to finish after he passed out.That had been remarkably short-sighted of him.Oh Merlin, Hermione, you’re starting to sound like you don’t have a heart anymore.Hermione’s body shivered with magic as she stepped out of the salt circle. She wanted to let it loose. Let it fly. Let it all burn. Is this what Metzker’s coven had done to her? Had they taken what they could from her until her tainted, cursed blood prevented them from finishing what they had started?She didn’t know the details of Metzker’s plan with the rogue vampires, and she didn’t care. All she knew was that Draco Malfoy couldn’t make the change without her blood. Well, unfortunately for him she regained her self conrol just in time.Before her wild impulses could take over and make another mess of his tasteful decor, she rummaged through the cabinet and downed a Clarifying potion. The buzz shot through her like lightning. Hermione took one more look at Draco’s unconscious form laying half-in, half-out of the salt circle, shook herself out of the dread and the horror and the sheer injustice of the situation, and firmly resolved to believe that it was Draco Malfoy’s own fault.Burns had said the Council wanted Metzker for unsanctioned turnings and interfering with the Ministry of Magic. Maybe the blame didn’t lay on her head, but she was probably going to be in trouble if… when… Draco Malfoy died. She should probably leave. Go somewhere far, far away and… do whatever vampires did when running for their lives.Now.Stepping gingerly away from the rug, the candles, and the dying wizard, she wiped her hands of any responsibility and fled into the night, leaving a blond man-thing passed out on the floor.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
All the way back to her flat, Hermione kept telling herself that Draco didn’t know what he was asking, but his words kept doing laps around her mind like a fast-flying broom in a closed circuit Quidditch pitch.My whole life, I never agreed to do anything…People have the audacity to blame me for it, as if I had a choice…He was running away from something so big that he would never get out from under it. Yet, here she was, a blur through the streets, running away, too. The joke was on both of them. No one could run fast enough to get away from themselves.Logically, the problem would take care of itself. He’d be dead in three days, give or take a few hours, just like Burns had told her once. She shouldn’t feel guilty or responsible about any of it. By his own admission, Draco had wrecked his life. He was weak and desperate and looking for someone to fix him.Well, Draco Malfoy, I am not that someone.Never mind that if she had done what he asked, the Council would kill him. Her too, for bringing a wizard-vampire hybrid into the world.Burns was probably hunting her right now.Hermione jiggled the lock to her flat. The door swung halfway open, jamming against the pile of mail on the floor. Her owl squawked in alarm and rose from behind the couch, flapping panicked laps around the living area, scattering loose papers and upsetting a stack of books on a side table. He finally landed, panting in the corner between the couch and the wall.“Krustus? It’s me.”Her owl blinked at her as if she was stalking him.With lightning fast reflexes, she snatched him up by the neck, stared into its wild eyes and felt it go rigid. Then, with a free hand, she extracted the notes from its leg.Part of her wanted to put the thing out of its misery. Hermione forced herself to find the remains of her humanity and immediately released the owl. He flew back into the corner, huddling among her reference books.Ugh, and this was what vampire guilt must feel like. It was like looking into a dark mirror, watching herself behave in such a way that Hermione the witch, Hermione the human… would find unnervingly repulsive.“I’m so sorry, Krustus,” she said to the trembling animal in the corner. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”She backed away and scattered a handful of owl pellets on the rug in an apology. Then slowly, so as not to spook him again, she made her way to the window and opened it as wide as it would go.“Go find a new home,” she said.Krustus bypassed the pellets and fled through the window the second she cleared the way, leaving a couple feathers in his wake. One by one, she read the notes he’d delivered. The only one she spent more than a second on was the voucher from the Ministry for three months’ worth of gold for her severance.The ache from losing her job still rubbed her raw, but she reminded herself that Henry’s takeover would be payback enough for Gringus Alabastor and his backstabbing moves. Clearly he had been unaware of Metzker’s true intentions or he’d have smelled of nerves and sweat. Maybe he hadn’t even known Metzker’s true nature. It made Hermione wonder just how insidious vampires were. How many of them had she passed on the street and never known how close to the darkness she had been?Burns. Burns had found her. He would find her again.Then she was in her bedroom, throwing things into her bag. Until she figured herself out, she would take what she could carry. A few changes of clothes. A solid pair of shoes. The magic whispers were deadened by Draco’s potion, but it was still an effort not to Accio everything to make the packing go faster.And then there was the bedside table drawer. Hermione still had Draco’s blood inside her. If she coaxed up a simple spell… it felt addictive, like she could do more if she wanted… but she resisted the pull and simply grabbed the knob. The drawer slid open.Hermione picked up her wand. There was no sensation, no lively hum of magic. It was nothing more than dead wood in her hand. Even though she wouldn’t ever use it again, it was too much a part of who she used to be to leave behind. She sifted past the dream journal, her favorite quill, and a medal of merit she'd earned for her humanitarian work over the last two years with the house-elves, to find whatever wouldn’t let the drawer open all the way. Her hand wrapped around a small box and wiggled it until it came loose. Hermione already knew what it was… already remembered why she had shoved it to the back.She didn’t mean to open it, but she did anyway.Made entirely of silver, the band had been charmed never to tarnish, with fine, hand-engraved scroll patterns flowing elegantly to the top. A small diamond nestled amongst tiny slivers of sapphires, making it sparkle, even in the lowest light.Even now, after everything, it took her breath away.She had already broken things off with Ron, but damn it, she couldn’t keep this. Snapping the box shut, she wished she could talk to someone about what to do with it. Dr. Metzker probably could have given her a list of options if Hermione ever wanted to listen to anything her deceitful, manipulative therapist had to say anymore.That was the one thing messenger owls and Muggle pagers had in common: neither could deliver messages to a body bag under thirty feet of water.Hermione snapped the box shut and tossed it back into the drawer. Emotions. She still had them. She’d been running so hard for so long, sustained by blood and potions, that she hadn’t taken a moment to process the deep chasm of mourning that yawned open inside of her. Everything that had meant anything to her was gone.Some of it wasn’t her fault… some of it was entirely her fault.She bit back a sob and returned to the kitchen where the letters sat on the island, waiting to be dealt with. Nothing about this situation was fair. She’d lived with the Wizarding World’s inequity ever since she found out that magic was real. It was almost poetic that she had run for a year to save this world, and now she had to run forever to save herself.Hermione added her signature to the bottom of the severance letter. Like a charm, the letter vanished, and a bag of coins appeared. She tied the bag to a chain around her neck and tucked it under her shirt where no one could snatch it away or pick it out of her pockets.“You won’t need goblin gold where we’re going.”She almost jumped out of her skin as the vampire Burns appeared from the shadows.Burns sniffed in her direction, and his brows pinched together. He could probably tell how much blood she had consumed, and what type of blood it was. Maybe he even sensed the potion chaser she’d taken to counter the side effects, which was why they were having a civilized conversation instead of him throwing her up against a wall and draining her of her life force right here, right now.Her voice was stained with unease. “How did you know I’d be here?”“I have a lot of experience with these things. You’re ready. All you have left to do is take care of the addict, and you’re free.”The chasm in her gut yawned even wider. She already packed away the guilt from how she and Draco had used each other. There would be deeper guilt if she made him into what he thought he wanted. “You mean turn him?”“If that is what you think I mean, your reputation as one of the Ministry’s best and brightest has been grossly exaggerated. Draco Malfoy is a functioning wizard,” Burns said flatly, as if the answer was stupidly obvious.Hermione winced at the term “functioning”, remembering how hard she had pretended to be a witch without magic. Remembering the pull of Draco’s spell, even when he was semi-conscious.“If you had turned him, he would have destroyed everything he could get his hands on. You. Me. The woman he loves.”“How did you know about…”“The stench of love-torn despair is in his blood. It’s not for you,” he clarified, “it’s inside you as a result of your feeding. Listen closely. Any vampire can complete the transformation, but only you can reverse it.”Hermione imagined another vampire finding him roaming the streets, lonely enough to give him vampire blood. She imagined the carnage that Draco would inflict on the world around him. It would be like when she attacked the vampires, but unlike her, Draco’s magic would have no end. He would destroy everything. Ron at the scene, her friends in the Ministry…Draco Malfoy, as a wizard-vampire hybrid, would burn down the whole city and take himself out while doing it.“There’s a place on the Council for someone like you. Someone who knows how the wizarding world works. It would be more convenient than you slipping off to Hungary forcing me to hunt you down.” His eyes narrowed. “But first, you have created a situation that needs taking care of.”Draco Malfoy.“I know how to reverse the ritual,” Hermione told him. “He had a book.”Burns nodded. “Fix it, and then we can talk about the next steps.”He turned to leave, or disappear, or whatever vampires did when a conversation was over, but Hermione had just figured out what was still holding her back.“Wait. There is one more thing.”She went into the bedroom, opened her dresser drawer and retrieved the ring box.“Could you return this?” she asked.She knew Burns could sense the same things she could, the overwhelming taint of Thai food and another smell that was entirely Ron. Or maybe that smell was just a memory, because it hurt too much to think about how she’d refused to let him help her. Refused to let him love her. Refused to allow herself, in her time of weakness, to love him back.None of that mattered. It was too late. All she could do now was to untether him from her in the only way he would understand.She handed the small box to Burns. He didn’t ask, so she didn’t elaborate. Maybe one day, when enough time passed, Ron would be only a memory, too.The box disappeared somewhere inside Burns’s trench coat. “If that’s what it takes, consider it done.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The Clarifying Potion was definitely wearing off.After Burns left, or she assumed he’d left because she could no longer feel his judgmental stare at the back of her neck, Hermione’s pent up frustration bubbled to the surface and refused to be contained. It rolled through her in waves, mixing with the magic blood in her veins. Her fingers sparked. Her gut clenched. An urge to tear things apart surged within her. She felt like a volcano ready to blow.All the manipulation, the way her boss and the rogue vampire had played on her weaknesses to further their own personal agendas… She couldn’t believe how easily they’d pulled her into their games. Her eagerness to prove herself had done the complete opposite, running her professional integrity into the ground. Destroying everything she’d worked so hard for.Hermione slung the bag over her shoulder and started for the door. The epiphany had come too late. Her selfishness and shortsightedness had decimated everything else. Whatever had been left of her friends and family who continued to bolster her after the war, she had set those relationships on fire all by herself.Her hand wavered on the door handle. No. She couldn’t leave like this. Not with the fire burning so hot within her. She whirled around and tossed the bag aside, facing her flat and all the contents within it. There was only one thing left to do.Hermione raged.She wrenched bookcases away from walls. She spun in circles until the whirlwind lifted everything off the floor. Power surged through her limbs, radiating like slow burning embers under her skin.Burns hadn’t mentioned if anger could be focused or controlled as a weapon, or whether that, too, was against the Council’s mysterious code. All Hermione could do was follow her instinct to destroy and crush, with no technique to master, other than destruction.A chair crashed into the ceiling lights, spraying shards of glass across the carpet in all directions. She screamed at the walls. He really was the worst mentor.Hermione let loose another burst of energy, feeling her body speed from one end of her flat to the other faster than drawing a wand. She flexed and lifted and tossed her couch as if she was a boulder-crushing giant. Unlike the magic that tingled under her fingertips, begging to be used, her vampiric abilities did not diminish.Though her anger finally did.When she was no longer so mad that she couldn’t see straight, Hermione sagged against the kitchen island, one of the last pieces left standing, probably because it was affixed to the floor. She wasn’t exhausted physically like she’d expected to be. Her strength and speed seemed to draw from a bottomless well of power.Surely, it wasn’t unlimited power, but it felt that way to her now. She could wreak havoc all over again, using whatever was inside her as freely as running water from a tap. But also, since her anger had finally subsided, she didn’t feel the need to do any more damage to her flat. She dropped the lamp she was holding, noting the satisfying crash as it landed bulb-side down onto the floor.Burns had said to take care of her problem. Part of her wanted to ignore what Burns had said just because he’d said it. But the larger part of her that insisted on surviving as… whatever she was now… disagreed.Go ahead, admit it. You’re a vampire.Hermione bristled as the truth surged through her and took up permanent residence in her brain. She expected to be horrified at the idea of forever drinking blood to survive and being eternally beholden to a shadowy organization that only served its own interests and cared nothing for her personal wants, needs and desires.But also, besides the blood drinking, isn’t that how you’ve been living all this time?Burns had given her an order. Hermione would get it done.With the couch overturned, the kitchen floor full of ceramic shards, and her prized collection of reference tomes reduced to a mountain of shredded parchment in the middle of the living room, Hermione threw on a hooded jumper and tore out of the flat.Dawn had broken by the time she got to the Hairy Arse Pub. Hermione ignored the ‘closed’ sign and wrenched the deadbolt right out of the frame, jerking the broken door wide open as if it was cardboard. Stale beer mixed with lemon scented industrial cleaner burned through her nostrils as she breezed past the loo and down the hall.She did not expect to see a dark form looming over the half dead wizard on the floor, surrounded by melted wax and scattered salt. The figure stiffened and turned to face her, and Hermione stared into the face of the man who she had always seen behind the bar.His fangs gleamed. He was one of them… one like her. Of course he was.“You don’t want this piece of rubbish,” Draco’s keeper said, “Or you wouldn’t have left him like this.”Hermione had beaten the other vampires that night because she was hyped up on wizard’s blood, and they were woozy from alcohol and other additives from whatever Draco had given them previously… but this bloke. This bloke looked strong and focused. If a cold, calculating nature could coat the air, icicles would be forming on every surface.“That’s not the point,” she countered, marking time with extra words. “He doesn’t want to go from being one kind of victim to another.”“Oh? You’re speaking for him now?” The vampire straightened to his full height, making Hermione feel even less adequate than she had moments before. Damned Burns and his damned way of not teaching her anything useful, like how to get out of a fight with someone obviously more powerful than herself.A fleeting thought interrupted her near-panic, one that was weighing the option of running away instead of trying to return Draco Malfoy to his previously sorry state.“Why did you come back, little fledgling? Do you think you can take away what’s mine?” He bared his fangs at her.Surprisingly, Hermione felt the pricks at her own gums. Her instinct was to stay and fight. Well, then. “Let’s find out.”The vampire lunged at her with lightning-quick speed. She ducked and rolled away from his grasping hands.When she got back on her feet, Hermione threw a hand up to a sudden wetness on her neck and rubbed at it. This man was fast. She wasn’t sure she could get to the front of the pub, especially if she was taking Draco’s unconscious form with her. The only advantage she had over this vampire was the thing that she’d quickly lose control over if she used it.Magic.She only had time to notice the red smear on her palm before she twisted away from a bottle opener zinging past her jugular.Her eyes narrowed. She’d been smashing furniture and tearing down walls all afternoon, but she hadn’t really let loose. The ottoman looked like fair game, just sitting in the middle of the room between them…She dove to the floor as a large mirror flew across the room like a frisbee and smashed into the wall above her head. As a shower of glass rained down on her, she wiped at another smear of blood off her arm.Hermione’s hands flexed, and sparks surfaced at the tips of her fingers. She crawled behind the desk and let the heat rise around her like an aura. Then she took aim and let the magic flow.The ottoman rose off the floor and spun wildly in midair, building extreme force and speed. Magic surged within her, like rising water behind a weakened dam, and she pointed, crashing the ottoman into the vampire. Quickly, Hermione tried to disengage, but another spell flew from her fingers unbidden, toppling the massive desk and crushing the body into the floor.Not too long ago, she’d embraced the mantra of violence never being the answer. But no ounce of remorse claimed her when she stared at the unmoving body, waiting for the rise and fall of his chest to check if he was dead.Then she remembered it wouldn’t do that, even if he was still alive.Right. Vampires.Cracks ran across the marbled floor, and two pieces of framing from Draco’s prized ottoman stuck out of the upholstery, toppled on its side. The cabinet was still intact at least. She went over, opened it, and ran her fingers along the little neatly labeled bottles all in a row. There, she found the clarity that she was looking for.Hermione downed the potion and waited for it to clear her head. She’d only used magic once. The rest of what she had done involved her newly acquired strength and speed… interesting that wizard’s blood enhanced her vampiric abilities as well.The potion fully kicked in, and her veins stopped humming.Grabbing some of the blood-replenishing potions, Hermione went to Draco and knelt at his side. His pulse nudged her fingers enough to let her know he was still there, but he wouldn’t be for much longer. She gently inclined his head and tipped a vial down his throat. Draco coughed and sputtered, but got it down.“That should keep you alive until I can reverse the ritual,” she said, picking up the small black book from where it lay on the floor.When she turned around to reset the candles, the other vampire had vanished. Hermione looked quickly around, but he’d clearly left the room. And she hadn’t noticed. He could be anywhere, waiting to attack again.Okay, so maybe the ritual wasn’t happening here. Hermione scanned the back wall for the exit, but the door to the alley had been reset with powerful wards. With Draco unconscious, she’d probably take the entire building down if she allowed that much magic to explode out of her. She was powerful, but she still couldn’t control it, not even with the Everclear keeping her head on straight.Hermione threw the salt and candles into her bag, slung Draco’s body over her shoulder, and hefted him back through the pub. It was a terrifying, horrifying feeling, with Draco wheezing in her ear, but it also told her he was still alive.She stopped in her tracks. The vampire stood at the end of the hallway, blocking her path. A nasty gash ran across his face, but otherwise, he didn’t look like a mahogany desk had crushed him.Do I have instant healing abilities, too?“You can’t have him,” Hermione told the man, indicating Draco’s prone form draped over her shoulder.“I’ve decided that I’ll take him anyway,” the vampire snarled.Draco’s form shuddered. “Just put me the fuck down, Granger,” he rasped. “If you take me away from him, Astoria dies.”“Burns said I had to fix you before I can move on, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do,” she said in a low tone for only his ears to hear.“Ha!” Draco coughed on her shoulder. “I’m too far gone for fixing.”Hermione had told herself that same lie, believing that she didn’t have the capacity for change. If she had been a little less stubborn and a lot more accepting of the help offered to her, things could have turned out differently. If she had been open to possibilities that she had not yet imagined…Hermione mulled this all over as the vampire waited for her to comply. He had a lot of patience. Probably had lived a long time.“Give me the wizard,” he said.“No. Get out of the way.”She flicked her wrist, and a table flew sideways into the vampire. It knocked him into the wall and Hermione rushed through to the main pub. She was almost to the door when another table, or maybe it was the same table, crashed down in front of her.“You’re not going anywhere,” the vampire said from behind her.Hermione whirled and sent a Body Binding Curse at him, but nothing happened. As he picked up another table, presumably to throw at her, she ducked with Draco behind another set of tables, bracing herself. Were all vampires impervious to magic? Maybe that was why the Statute was in place. If a wizard became a vampire, would he have any weaknesses? And why would this vampire be daft enough to do that to Draco Malfoy? If he thought he could control a wizard-vampire, he was clearly more insane than any magic would make him. Or maybe, he was just after Draco’s blood, which could open the door to a slew of other bigger, badder problems.No wonder Burns demanded that she reverse what she’d started.Another table crashed into the one she had ducked behind. Hermione placed Draco down behind her and levitated several tables at once, sending them across the pub to bury the vampire. Seconds later, he burst out the pile of splintered wood and maneuvered behind the bar.“You’re ruining all the good furniture!” he snarled from across the room.Hermione tried to summon the barricade of tables away from the front door, but the vampire kept hurling things at her, breaking her focus.She had a good imagination. She imagined using just enough magic to knock the vampire around without losing her control, getting three feet more towards the door, and then having to do it all over again.If she kept knocking him down, and he kept getting back up, this would never end.Hermione flicked her fingers at another set of tables, aiming for his head. He ducked behind the bar, and half of the furniture smashed into the glass above him, breaking several shelves of liquor.“Your aim is off,” Draco said from behind her.“Is it?”Hermione aimed her focus at the shelves of spraying liquid behind the vampire’s head.“Incendio.”The alcohol caught, and flames poured down from the shelves. The vampire snarled, started for her, and then flinched as fire leapt up at his liquor-soaked back.Hermione cried out as the wizard’s blood pounded in her veins, trying to take hold, compelling her to cast more, more, more... It wanted out of her system, like it was trapped inside a vessel where it did not belong. It didn’t hurt, but just knowing that the magic wanted out, that it no longer belonged inside of her, had her gasping for breath.Even the magic doesn’t want me.She almost gave in, raising her arms to blast the vampire to ash, but then she dropped her hands and shook them out frantically, trying to rid herself of the rage that wanted to consume her. If she allowed herself to grant it freedom, no clarifying potion would keep her head on straight.The vampire ducked and rolled, his dark hair and clothing singed by the flames. He stalked closer to her position in the corner and threw another table. Hermione cast a shield charm, braced against the impact, and felt her control slipping.Another well-placed Incendio would make the whole place go up in a blaze and then she could just grab Draco and run…Her body wanted her to do it. Everything inside her screamed at her to do it… she pointed her hand at the vampire, spells running through her head…The vampire froze like a stone statue, waiting for her to make a move, preparing to dodge whatever she threw at him…Magic permeated her skin, giving her a faint glow. She could feel it grabbing control of her will.What are you waiting for? Destroy everything around you!Already, the vampire had maneuvered between the blazing furniture maze. He would have been on them already if the flames weren’t already licking the ceiling and snaking across the floor.“I’m sorry,” she said, mostly to herself. “I can’t control it anymore. One more spell, and we’ll all go up in flames.”Something shifted beside her. Hermione wildly turned to see Draco muttering silently, moving his hand in seemingly random patterns.“What are you doing?” she hissed at him.Draco smiled weakly. “Saving you from a bad decision.”Then in a bright explosion, a fiery snake erupted out of the loo with the unmistakable glow of Fiendfyre.The vampire flinched as the snaking flames circled the ceiling. At any moment, it would strike down at them, and everything would go up in unquenchable flames, but still, he moved towards them, intent on ending her, or turning Draco, or....It was obvious he intended for them to all go down together.“No,” she said. “If he’s not letting us out of here, I’m not giving him the chance to leave, either.” He was getting closer, and the Fiendfyre was right above them. If this was the last time she was ever going to do magic, she was going to make it count.Hermione pointed a finger across the room. “Wingardium Leviosa.”A large metal serving platter rose off the floor. She held it there, waiting for the hum in her veins to settle, feeding everything she had into the casting. The magic took the only out it was given and poured into the spinning tray as it zoomed like a diving Thestral across the room. The vampire didn’t have time to duck, so when the platter landed with a clatter in the corner, his head landed on top of it.Draco’s hands were still moving. The furniture cleared from the front door, and he rasped, “Run!”Hermione grabbed him and bolted straight for the street. A car whizzed past, blaring its horn as she dashed away from the flames.Behind her, another explosion erupted, probably from the Fiendfyre lighting up the Butterbeer barrels in the store room. Something poked her in the side. With her free hand, she pulled the offensive item out of her bag.It was her wand.Hermione’s fist clenched around the useless piece of wood. She’d had so much of her life, so much of her identity wrapped around it. Well, that wasn’t happening anymore. She had no use for it, especially not when magic itself had rejected her.She propped Draco against the bricks of a nearby building and approached the blaze, its tendrils of flame reaching towards the sun. She got as close as she dared and threw her wand into the roaring fire.If she never saw another wand again, it would be too soon.At the resounding pops of Aurors apparating at the scene, Hermione blended into the shadows, hoisted Draco’s body over her shoulder, and ran.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Hermione placed the candles around the raised metal platform, following the diagram in the book with expert precision. She spread the salt and stepped back and looked at her handiwork. Draco was so pale he almost blended into the sanitized sheet beneath him. So still. The only evidence of life was when she had put her hand to his face and felt a slight movement of air. The surrounding slabs all lay quiet, just like Draco’s body. The St. Mungo’s morgue felt like the appropriate place for what she was about to do.She could end his misery now. He might even ask for it, if he was in a position to ask. But as he’d told her, Draco never got a choice. He wouldn’t get a choice at this, either. The git was going to live, whether he wanted to or not.Hermione had learned a lot about Draco Malfoy over the last week.He loved, but he did not love her. His care only extended towards things that kept him alive. He thought he wanted to be part of this new, uncharted existence Metzker had thrown her into. If he hated his life now, he would loathe his existence after.And her. Did she care? Did she love? Was she even capable of those things anymore?Those questions stewed around inside her brain as she took the knife and made a small prick on each of Draco’s fingers, then a small prick on each of his toes. Small beads of red appeared at his extremities. Surrounded by the quiet and the death, as the last of the blood replenishing potion ran out of his body in steady drops onto the metal table, she found her answer.He was on the bed, mostly bled out. And she felt… nothing.Draco was no Ron, which is why she could do this to him.Hermione had always been the kind of person to do everything by the book. The Dark Magic book in her hand smelled like decay and hopelessness. It was the only thing she’d taken from the pub besides Draco’s body.She eyed the double doors that led to the rest of the hospital where the noises of saving lives bled through. This ritual might not be the customary practice within the walls of St. Mungo’s, but it was all she had. She arranged the candles in a counterclockwise order. She said the enchantment and felt the power take hold of the air in the room, unsure if it was vampire magic, Dark Magic, or simply a method to focus her intent on the process.The book heated in her hands. She dropped it near the first candle, reciting the last incantation before it went up in flames.Smoke swirled around the room as the candle wicks suddenly ignited. Draco’s naked form writhed on the slab in an unnatural, very un-life-like way. His heartbeat was still very faint, but she could smell the fleeting scent of life.She’d memorized the last line of the ritual: “Offer a drink of life”. Hermione scrambled up and got him a glass of water from the faucet. She stepped inside the circle, lifted his head, and made him drink.He coughed and sputtered. Just like magic, color returned to his skin.A click of heels echoed down the hall, and a familiar voice rang out, “This is ridiculous, being Summoned to the morgue three hours before my shift! I told you I would not help you aga…”The woman from Draco’s photograph stopped at the edge of the room, staring at the smoke and flame, too shocked to continue her lecture.“Healer Greengrass.” Hermione crossed out of the boundary of the circle.Healer Greengrass stared at her, blinking rapidly, fisting her wand in a defensive posture. “I wasn’t expecting to see you again.”“I wasn’t expecting to come here again. In fact, this is the last time.”The Healer huffed. “I’ve heard that before.” She used her wand to confine the swirling smoke to below their ankles, well away from the detectors at the ceiling. Then she took a closer look at Draco’s body, barely breathing, and went on high alert. She busied herself with the contraptions and sensors in the room, assessing his condition. Levitating him to a different slab. Summoning the life-saving contraptions from the floor above where people were still trying to survive.“He lost a lot of blood,” Hermione said.“That’s obvious,” Astoria said, letting a slight hint of panic creep into her professional manner. She turned an accusing stare at Hermione. “What the hell happened?”Hermione wasn’t sure how much she should tell this woman. Then she decided that the truth was better than anything else, because that would give him the best chance of survival. “He started a turning ritual and compelled me to take part. After he lost consciousness, I broke out of it.”Healer Greengrass looked like she was going to lose her mind. Her wand was out, shaking in her hand, pointed at Hermione. She looked more like an Auror than a Healer.“I just reversed it. The ritual. I reversed the ritual,” Hermione said, talking quickly before she found out what kind of curses this Healer was good at, and whether she, as a vampire, was truly immune to them.Healer Greengrass looked skeptical, still pointing her wand at Hermione’s head, so she continued.“He never tasted blood. He’s still human. One hundred percent. Run your tests if you need to.”Draco wheezed.“Oh, Merlin!” Healer Greengrass stowed away her wand and laid her hands all over him. Words poured from her lips. Healing incantations, probably. Stabilizing charms. Hermione didn’t understand half of what the Mediwitch was doing, but with each passing second, Draco Malfoy seemed to inch closer to life.“I should kill you for this,” Healer Greengrass said calmly as Draco’s breathing turned from desperate gasps to even, relaxed breaths. “But what’s done is done.”“Is there anything else I can do?” Hermione asked. That’s what one usually said when there was nothing left to do, but one wanted to keep trying, even if only to make it right.“The blood replenishing potions will take a few hours, and then we’ll see if there is any lasting damage. No one has ever taken a bite out of him before. My worst nightmare is that he’d go out like this, with his clients taking their profits out of his veins.”“So you knew what he was up to,” Hermione said. “The blood business, the vampires, everything?”“I never wanted to know everything. I told him that unless he was willing to walk away from it all…”“He’s willing now.”“He’s half dead.” Astoria whirled on Hermione, fire in her eyes. “What about the pub debts?”Apparently Draco had shared enough that she understood, even if she didn’t agree.Hermione thought back to the man in the pub and the gleam in his eye, and the way his head tore off his shoulders. The way the Fiendfyre lapped around his body before she ran with Draco out of the burning building.There might be insurance to rebuild the building, but there would be no one left to claim it.“Paid. In full.”“Oh.” The word escaped Astoria’s mouth in a hopeful, desolate noise. A breath of willingness to believe that Draco has left his business at last. “He has nothing now,” she said, “and no one to fall back on.”“He has you.” Hermione was willing to Compel this Greengrass woman if she had to, but she was counting on Astoria needing no compulsion.“Of course he does, the little shite,” she said, dabbing her eyes with her sleeve. “He’s going to be so furious when he wakes up and finds his life gone.”“He will be grateful for a second chance,” Hermione said. “And he still loves you, for what that’s worth.”Astoria looked like Hermione’s last statement was worth all the Galleons in Gringotts. “But why didn’t you… you had the chance, and you brought him here?”“I’m leaving town,” Hermione said simply, learning from Burns not to say too much and being final about it.“He’s never wanted my help before.”“Believe me. He’ll want it now.” If Hermione had been in Draco’s position, teetering between an eternity of damnation and a salvageable life, she would have given every ounce of her dignity to return to her old self. It was too late for her, but Draco had a real chance at starting over. She could at least leave him with that.Healer Greengrass busied herself with filling out his medical chart. “He needs anti-addiction therapy for potion overuse, which has caused severe anemia.”Just then, Draco woke briefly, weakly thrashing under the sheets. “No, no… where is she?”Hermione looked at Astoria. “Go to him,” she said.Astoria went, intending to give him a dose of Dreamless Draught, and he grabbed at her arm, glassy eyed. Then shook himself out of it as he recognized her. The look in his eyes spoke of everything that Hermione couldn’t name. She watched in silence as Astoria administered the potion and Draco passed out again with her name on his lips.Hermione’s vision blurred. That was a kind of devotion that she would never deserve.The Healer gave a watery sigh. Apparently Hermione wasn’t the only one who could still cry. “I knew him before the war. They forced him to be on the wrong side of things. He always said he wanted to give me the world, but I kept telling him I didn’t need pretty things or a mansion. He would never accept that I could just be happy with him the way he was, without his family’s money. We tried for a time, but I… don’t know why I’m telling you all this. Not after you....”“It meant nothing,” Hermione said. The last thing she wanted to do was rationalize her actions to this woman. Two desperate people reaching desperately for the thing they had lost was not exactly nothing, but it wasn’t a foundation for anything, either.Astoria turned back to her patient. “He’s going to need someone to observe him. I could take a week off…” She waved her wand, and figures and charts appeared in translucent blue in the air. “Maybe two weeks,” she muttered under her breath. “If I dig into my emergency leave.”“He deserves some decency after everything he’s been through,” Hermione said, speaking from her own experience. Draco was climbing out of the pit of hell while she was descending. There was no need for both of them to go down. “And when he’s better, let him take care of you. Any way he can.”As she turned to leave in the stark room, the Mediwitch spoke again. “You did the right thing.”Hermione paused with her back to the Healer, unwilling to give her the satisfaction of seeing the heavy emotions dancing over her own face. She shook her head and pushed through the double doors, leaving the Healer to do what she was best at. When it came to Draco Malfoy, that woman would have her work cut out for her.She inhaled deeply, not even knowing if she needed the breath. The noises of the hospital echoed through the basement as she found a stairwell and started to climb. A door above her opened and footsteps came down. Burns hadn’t needed to tell her how to instinctively blow out her breath and will herself to fade into the walls.The orderly hurried past the landing and burst through the doors below. Healer Greengrass barked instructions in an authoritative tone. Hermione waited until the stairwell door slammed shut and then resumed her climb.You did the right thing.It had been so long since someone had told her that. Ron… her boss… they’d all spoken words of wrongness, telling her how she was doing everything in the way that was not expected of her. Asking over and over again, why couldn’t she stop pushing through life the hard way… and here was a witch who’d been handed the man she loved, half dead, addicted to potions and vampires, telling Hermione Granger that she’d finally gotten it right.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Hermione exited the stairwell and saw Burns leaning casually against the wall in the corridor. Mediwitches and Healers bustled around him as if he wasn’t there.Like she had in the stairwell, Hermione took his cue and made herself a shadow beside him. She was learning.A lot of what Healer Greengrass had said made sense. There were many forms of addiction. Draco had it. Hermione had it. And as she gazed down the hall at the new patient being admitted into St. Mungo’s, she knew Ron had it as well.I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry...It was a heartfelt apology this time, not the guilt-laden, self-pitying mantra of last week. She was truly sorry for her role in Ron’s unhappiness. Sorry for giving Draco a false sense of hope. They would both have to work through their personal issues on their own. She was surprised to realize that she was still capable of love in this way, the love that let things go.She stepped aside to avoid the Mediwitch who barreled down the hall towards her new patient down the hall, and then followed at a distance to catch the conversation at hand. From the announcements overhead, Ronald Weasley had just been admitted for treatment of Fiendfyre burns.Ron had been the single most important person in her life, and even though she would never see him again, she had to know if he was okay.Three figures gathered outside the room: a short woman, a tall younger man, and a woman Hermione’s age who, only a few months ago, she’d been as close as a sister to. Knowing the family, the rest of them would descend like a murder of crows, and she hoped she wouldn’t have to witness the whole crowd of overwhelming care and concern, because even as cold and detached as she wanted to make herself, she didn’t think she could face all that. Not so soon after she had thrown it all away.The door to the room opened, and Neville stepped out, still talking to someone inside.“You shouldn’t have… There was no reason…” He waited a beat, and then, “We don’t know that, Ron. No one knows anything yet. Just… I’ll talk to your family, okay?”
The woman wrung her hands. The taller man ran both hands through his hair, and the other one, who Hermione had once called a sister, dabbed at her eyes with the sleeve of her Quidditch romper.“His team answered a call about a disturbance at the Hairy Arse. Ron found the remains of her wand and was convinced she was back there somewhere and went into the blaze.” Neville paused at the barrage of questions, but they all quieted down when he shook his head. “She wasn’t. She wasn’t anywhere.”Hermione’s heart, or the place where her heart used to be, ached with a thousand Billywig stings as Neville ushered them into the room and closed the door. Alone, he stood outside the door, running a hand through his hair, shaking his head. Looking at the floor.Suddenly, Burns was there in front of Neville. He held out the small leather box and said a few words.From where she remained cloaked in the shadows, she could make out the worry lines on Neville’s face as he stared at the box. The shadows in his eyes. The burn marks on his hands. The charred robe sleeves.She could only imagine Ron’s condition if Neville was still out here, standing in the hallway, damaged by all the fire and soot and loss.Neville sighed heavily and slipped the box into his pocket. “He’s going to be so… drunk and a mess, and I don’t know if anyone’s able to pull him back together this time.”This time.How many ‘last times’ had there been? Had she been the cause?The old Hermione would have rushed into that room and confessed everything, tried to work through the differences so she could have a shred of her old life back. And Ron would forgive and continue to love her, and care for her.Those were selfish thoughts to save Hermione from the guilt, but it would ultimately kill Ron. That was the last thing in the world that Hermione Granger wanted. She’d fought for others so they wouldn’t have to live alone, unprotected, and unsupported. But if she exposed what she was now, no one would fight for her, and they would be right. She was the poster ex-witch for the cause she no longer stood for.Burns said something else, and Neville’s eyes went cold. “No. You can tell him yourself,” he said, and let Burns the vampire into the room.Hermione cringed as muffled wailing rose behind the closed door. The thought that this was what she had wanted coated her like a wet blanket, and she stood there, listening to Ron’s wail above it all, so much wailing, like the earth had swallowed them up, and they were trying to crawl their way out of hell. Numbness slid through her, chilling the agony of the twisting knife in her gut that she no doubt deserved for her betrayal.Suddenly, Burns appeared at her side. Hermione sucked in a breath. “What did you tell them?” she asked, surprised at how detached she sounded.“The truth,” he said. “You sent me to return the box, and then you disappeared. Also, in about half an hour, the Ministry will get a report that your flat burnt to the ground. Signs show all the doors and windows were locked.He shrugged as if the words meant nothing.Another thought almost broke through her calm. “My neighbors…”“No one was in the building, not even that little owl. If you must know, there’s a pile of charred human bones in the kitchen.”She felt the urge to throw furniture again. As if tearing the world apart was going to help ease her guilt. It wasn’t. She shuddered and let the anger pass through her like a bitter wind.“That’s… extreme,” she said with as little feeling as she could.“It’s final. You’re as good as dead to everyone who ever knew you. That is the truth they must accept.”That was true. It had been hard enough for her to stop fighting the changes her life had thrown at her. It would be just as hard for Ron, but just like she’d struggled to find her own place, he would have to fight for his. Alone.Strange how the acceptance made it easier to tamp down the guilt. In fact, if she was being completely honest, there was hardly any guilt left to speak of. That could only mean one thing.Hermione held out the compass. “I brought it.”“I was counting on it.”“I thought… but you don’t need a Portkey, do you?”“It’s for you,” he said. “I’ll teach you not to need one, when you’re ready. But we must go now. The bus at Bükkszentlászló is always a few minutes early. How’s your Hungarian, by the way?”“Teával szolgálok fel a nagymamádnak,” Hermione said, precariously balancing the consonants in the middle of her tongue. The Cornish Pixies had responded to Hungarian much better than English, and she’d picked up a few phrases along the way. One involving “tea” and “elders”.Burns smirked, which gave her a start. She didn’t know he was capable of such a… human… expression.“Megtisztel majd. És van még mit tanulni,” he said.She ran the vocabulary through her head, putting together the “honor” with the “muchness” and the “learning”. She scoffed at the idea of Burns teaching her anything in the conventional way. All he’d done so far was give her cryptic truths and left her alone to ponder them while struggling to survive on her own.The important part was that she had survived.Later, she might cry about it and feel sorry for herself and the people she’d hurt along the way, but right now, she kept her feelings buried under a thick layer of indifference. Standing in the middle of the hallway, in St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies, a place where miracles happened every day, a place where they saved lives and gave people hope to go on living, she couldn’t even feel her own heart beating. She was finally free from the magic she had held so dear, the magic that came with rules and consequences and heartbreak and things that used to matter to her…Finally… Finally, she could accept the truth she had been fighting against for as long as she could remember.“I don’t belong here anymore.”Her hand hovered over the small button on the cover of the compass, which would pop it open and activate the Portkey, whisking her away to… Somewhere in Hungary, she guessed. Burns hadn’t promised her anything. He had told her even less about where they were going when they got to Bükkszentlászló. In that regard, he was as terrible a mentor as Metzker had been a therapist. But the one thing that Hermione Granger excelled at was making a place for herself in an unknown world. She’d done it twice before, and she could do it again.Burns’ black glare pierced right through her, like he was peering into the shadows behind her. Maybe that was their ultimate destination after all. She nodded once, squeezed the trigger on the compass, and disappeared with him into the night. She had no idea where she was going, but wherever it was, Hermione Granger had nothing more to prove.