A/N: This is a Vampire fic. I didn't want to do it. It just happened. Blame Twilight. I fear it has significantly influenced me. I didn't want to delve into the stereotypes nor did I want to get into the habit of writing clichés but I need to get this out of my system. I'll try to keep these to a minimum but this one has been eating me alive.
I hesitated to start another chapter story when I have three other ones I'm working on but I feel that I update them often enough to do it. Plus I like to alternate writing the ones I have so I can think about what to do next after that.
Description: Draco Malfoy hates Mudbloods. He thinks they taste horrible. When he gets a bit of Hermione Granger's blood on his tongue…well, he could always change his mind.
Warnings: Heavy petting (that's hot and sweaty snogging…second base?), swearing, violence and gore. This is AU. Takes place in seventh year, no Voldemort but simply Hogwarts School, and vampires.
Disclaimers: Not my characters. Le sigh.
Resisting the Call
The soft clicking of Hermione Granger's heels as she walked swiftly through the darkened hallway echoed in the stillness. She just couldn't believe that Ron and Harry would go off on their own, leaving her in Hogwarts while they traipsed who knows where in the Forbidden Forest. She had told them to that it was too dangerous. She had reminded them of the rules. Then she pleaded with them to stay. In the end, Harry and Ron left her to go on their adventure. She had no idea why the two boys didn't just go to Dumbledore about Harry's latest dream. It was safer and Dumbledore would have been able to do something.
Harry's dream was particularly ominous as well. He had dreamt that a dark figure was stalking the forest. Harry Potter was a bit of a seer in that he had prophetic dreams sometimes. The problem usually was that he dreamt of nothing of value and often times misread the signs. This one could be dangerous though. It was simply stupid to rush in there without a plan but would those two listen to her? Noooo. It was all "come on 'mione! What if this could endanger the lives of the students?!" "We have to do something!"
"Doing something would have been going to someone who could actually DO something!" Hermione huffed under her breath.
"Talking to yourself, Granger?" Draco, emerging from a room behind her, said. Hermione spun around, wand at the ready. When she saw it was Draco who had talked she rolled her eyes. The wand was not dropped. Draco had been the bane of her friend's existence ever since he transferred from Durmstrang to Hogwarts last year. "That's one of the signs you're going crazy."
"You don't need to worry about that. My mind is still sharp unlike yours." Hermione spat then she broke into a sweet smile. "How did you do on your transfiguration test?"
Draco scowled. He managed to blow up a vase in an attempt to transfigure it to a flower. Sometimes it was difficult to control his strength, especially if he just ate. Shards of pottery lodged into his wand hand. It was still bandaged. Needless, but who would know that? Granger knew about the accident, she was just being haughty. Hermione Granger was arrogant when it came to what she thought she knew about everything. It pissed Draco off.
"Where are your boyfriends? Do they not need you anymore?" Draco smirked. "Too into each other are they?"
"Where they are, who they are and what they are doing is not your business." Hermione finally lowered her wand. Draco wanted to exchange insults not curses. Fine, Hermione was in a bad enough mood to play his game. "Nothing is your business, Malfoy, so why don't you run along and be a good little evil cretin somewhere else. What are you doing here anyway?"
"None of your business." Draco sneered as he put his hands in his pockets and took a significant glance toward the room he just exited. He strolled over to Hermione until he was just in front of her. She held her ground and raised her chin. Draco knew that she had her wand pointed at his stomach just in case. That was so like her to do that. Draco smiled and leaned down until he was level with her smaller frame. "Nothing is your business."
Hermione had never really been this close to Draco Malfoy. She could see every detail of his smirking face. His skin was like cream. Not a blemish, not a freckle. His eyes were clear and his blue irises seemed to glow in the low light. He flashed a smile and even his teeth were perfect. Straight, white and not too big. It was a shame such a perfect looking person was so rotten on the inside.
"You know Malfoy, you're not as big as you would like to think you are." Looked levelly into his blue eyes. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of backing down.
"I'm plenty big as you would like me to be." Draco answered immediately and straightened. Hermione didn't even realize how close they had been until Malfoy pulled away. It took her a moment to understand what he had said.
"Don't be gross. You're juvenile but even still you had some class. Now you're just sickening." Hermione was about to leave when she spotted someone coming out of the same room Malfoy had vacated moments before. It was a girl, Ravenclaw by the looks of it but Hermione couldn't place a name. Her clothing was disheveled and her hair mussed. She wobbled a bit and used the door frame as support. Then she noticed Hermione and Draco looking at her.
"What happened?" She asked nobody in particular. Because he was turned away at the time, Hermione missed Draco's amused smile. When he turned back to her his eyes widened at Granger's disgusted look.
"Very nice." Hermione rolled her eyes again and turned away.
She walked away as fast as she could without seeming like she was running away. She tried to ignore the soothing murmurs Draco gave the girl as she left. It was gross to do that sort of thing in school! Most importantly, it was against the rules. If Hermione hadn't been out after curfew then she would have reported him. He probably didn't even care about the girl. He didn't care about anyone.
In the end Hermione broke down and went out toward the Forbidden Forest to see if she needed to rescue Ron and Harry. Before she even made it to the tree's edge she saw them emerging from the wood. She ran to greet them and noticed that they were laughing and joking together. Didn't they realize how worried she was? Didn't they care that they could be punished for being out so late?
"Well, what happened?" Hermione asked as soon as she could.
"Oh, sorry, 'mione. It was a false alarm." Harry started out solemnly.
"It was just Hagrid sleepwalking!" Ron burst out laughing.
"He had a black blanket on! It was an honest mistake!" Harry started chuckling too.
"Do you two realize how late it is? Do you realize how worried I was? Did the fact that you could have been killed not even apply to your grand plan?" Hermione shouted.
"Geeze, 'mione, we're sorry but we had to make sure." Ron started.
"Don't you dare 'Geeze, 'mione' me! The next time the two of you run off to play hero I think you should tell somebody who might be able to help you!" Hermione scolded. Both boys grinned at each other and threw their arms around Hermione's shoulder.
"We told you, didn't we?" Harry said as the three started walking back to the castle.
"Yeah, you would have been able to help us." Ron said. Hermione sighed. Never the same situation but always the same thing with these two.
::
After Draco walked Daisy back to her dorms he headed out on the roof to get a view of the night sky. It's not like he needed the night but he always felt better when he could see the stars. Direct sunlight was irritating but doable. His eyes had trouble adjusting to the brightness of day but he could still see. His vision was superior in darkness, however. So superior that he could see every detail of the three Gryffindors as they made their way across the expanse between the Forbidden Forest and Hogwarts Castle. The two boys were laughing and telling the story of Hagrid's night walk to a slightly irritated but agreeable Hermione Granger. Draco had been tempted to taste her in the past. It had passed but sometimes the urge would creep up again. Like tonight when he caught her walking about when he was feeding on Daisy. He would never do it though. He'd tasted Muggleborn blood before and the slur "Mudblood" fell true on that aspect. Draco had no desire to try it again, no matter how smooth and slim her neck was.
Draco Malfoy remembered the day he became one of the Undead. It was nearly sixty five years ago but he remembered it like it was yesterday. He was playing with his younger brother, Abraxas, in the streets of London that day. Looking back, it wasn't the smartest thing a seventeen year old could do with a five year old but hind sight was always 20/20. Abraxas wasn't an unruly child per say but he was a bit adventurous and Draco remembered that the little boy had wandered off away from Draco's sight. It happened so fast that he wasn't able to stop it. He looked around for Abraxas for a while, called loudly for the little boy to come back but by the time he found him, Abraxas was in danger. Draco had found him in the arms of a mysterious man in an alleyway. He had the boy's small head in his oversized hand, neck angled in an awkward way. The man was smiling in a grotesque way, clearly amused over Abraxas' whimpering.
"Let him go!" Draco screamed. The man looked up and his smile grew larger. Draco could see the tears of his brother staining his small chubby cheeks.
"Draco, I'm scared." Abraxas whimpered as the man chuckled.
"It's ok Brax. It's going to be okay." Draco tried to sooth his brother's worries as he slowly approached the pair. The man was big, a bigger man than what Draco could take down. He looked around for something to use as a weapon.
"Not a good idea, pet." The man, reading Draco's intention, warned. "I'd tear the head from his shoulders before you even reach me."
"Don't hurt him!" Draco immediately pleaded. There was a reason this man was waiting. There was a reason Abraxas wasn't already dead. The man wanted something from Draco. "What do you want? Let him go and I'll give it to you."
"How kind of you." The man's gruesome smile came back. "There is something I want. You see, this boy is too small and I've seen you around here for some time. I wanted you from the start."
Draco thought he knew where this was going. Many men had made such comments about Draco. They thought he was good looking, they wanted him. This man seemed to be no different. Draco had never allowed any of those previous men near him but now his brother's life was at risk. He would do anything to keep his brother safe.
"Let him go first." Draco said and swallowed nervously. The man laughed and dropped Abraxas. The little boy ran to the safety of his brother's arms. Draco kneeled and hugged his brother. "Now you go around that corner and wait for me, okay? Don't look. I won't be long."
The man at least waited until Abraxas was around the corner before attacking Draco. He was so fast that Draco didn't have time to make any sort of move. He put that same oversized hand around Draco's neck and slammed him against the stone wall of the alleyway. Draco squeezed his eyes shut in an effort to block the sight of the horrible man in front of him. He couldn't block out the smell of the man's breath as he leaned closer in. Draco desperately tried to think of something else, pretend that this wasn't happening.
"It wouldn't have come to this if you had heeded my calls, boy." The man growled. "You have resisted me for too long."
"Just hurry up and get this over with!" Draco bit out. He didn't want to be in this man's presence.
"The taste of young, healthy men…" The man mumbled as he leaned in toward Draco's neck. "So…strong and fresh at the same time…"
"Wha…" Draco started out before he felt a tremendous pain in his neck. It shot through his arm right down to his fingertips like hot molten metal was released inside of his body. It was then that Draco tried to fight the man off but his hold had shifted to around Draco's waist and head, holding his neck to the side. After a while of this Draco started feeling cold, numb and exhausted. He started going limp.
"He's in there!" Draco could hear Abraxas' shrill exclamation at the mouth of the alleyway along with many alarmed men's voices. He also heard the man attacking him curse as he released Draco's neck from his mouth.
"No time left…" The man said in a hurry as he dropped Draco's depleted body. Draco heard rather than saw the man leap away.
He remembered thinking it was odd that the man was able to jump over the high wall of the alleyway but his mind was getting muddled. Draco's glazed eyes only saw shapes rush around but he recognized Abraxas' small frame as he ran up to him and knelt down by Draco's body.
"Draco! Draco, are you alright?" Abraxas whined. "Get up! He's gone now!"
"What the hell did he do?" A Muggle police officer asked. He was then shuffled aside by another man. Ah, Draco's fading mind though, a wizard.
"The man bit him. He was crazy. Search the area." The Wizard Police Officer said. Draco's eyes were getting heavy and his mind was shutting down but he still remembered exactly what the man said before he passed out. "The poor bastard. He'll live…almost."
Sitting on the roof of Hogwarts Castle, Draco sighed and leaned back against one of the steeples of a tower. Almost alive; almost dead. Yeah, he was a poor bastard. In the end, his parents paid off the Ministry of Magic not to disclose any information about the infection. They said that Draco had died due to a jealous Muggle and erased any evidence of his whereabouts. He was basically written off. It simply wouldn't do to have a Vampire in the Malfoy family. Many times he had overheard his father say, "If only he had drained him all." His father had not taken into account that Draco's hearing had increased ten fold.
The first fifteen years had been terrible. He didn't know what to do with his newfound powers or his newfound hunger for the blood of the living. At first he tried Muggles, being sure to drain them fully so they wouldn't turn like he did but that proved problematic. For one, it was disgusting. Two, he caused unnecessary friction between him and the Ministry of Magic. If there was an unregistered Vampire on the loose that meant they were ready to pounce on them. Where were they when he was attacked?
In the end he formulated a full proof method of drinking his fill, never killing his prey and at the same time not turning any of his victims. He used syringes. It was easy to lure weak minded people into an empty room after he had found out how to hypnotize or "call" them. The holes he caused were minimal and, since they were pretty much in a trance, painless. They were just confused when they woke up, like Daisy was that evening.
He had always stayed around the Malfoy family, he watched his brother grow up. When Abraxas took over the family when their father died, Draco was welcomed back into the house. He was said to be a distant relative but after a while people started to talk. Draco simply did not age like a normal human. So the Malfoy's moved around often. Abraxas had a son, Lucius, and Draco saw him grow up as well. Then Abraxas came down with Dragon Pox. Draco offered to turn him but his brother decline. He said that he had lived a good life and was willing to die. He thanked Draco for his sacrifice that day in the Alleyway and promised that the Malfoy's would take care of Draco forever. In the end, Draco held his brother's hand as he passed away. After that, Luscius was his only family. He spent a while in Durmstrang but Luscius was called to London for business so Draco went to Hogwarts School to pass the time. That's when he met the 'golden trio'. Not a single one of them have ever responded to his call. It was irritating to find one person who could resist him but to have three of them? Never mind that they were close friends but to have them in such close proximity was infuriating. That was probably why he singled them out like he did.
Draco watched the sun rise from his position on the roof. He sighed and started to get up. He needed to get to his bed and pretend to be asleep when the rest of his dorm mates woke. Not for the first time Draco wished he could actually sleep. Draco got down from his stoop and ran to his room. If anyone noticed anything, it was only the wind in the hallways.
