Disclaimer: I own nothing, it all belongs to J.K Rowling, that lucky girl…

Chapter One: Bad Habits and News

A dark haired girl was sitting by the lake in lotus position, her fingers brushing lightly over the dark surface of the water. While shuddering slightly as the cold night breeze reached her pale skin, she sensed that someone was near; there was a perfume scent in the air. It was male.

She quickly withdrew her hand from the lake as she saw a boy reflected in the water. He was ghastly pale, and he appeared bald in his reflection because he had hair as black as night. The girl turned around slowly, a sly smile on her outlined seventeen year old face. Her red-painted lips mouthed the words, 'The apology?' and she winked at him. He showed absolutely no emotion, but she knew he was bursting with feelings inside.

"You're poison, Pansy Parkinson, but I love you to death, and I know you love me too." Blaise Zabini stepped closer to her with his golden stare staring Pansy straight in the eyes, trying to un-nerve her.

Pansy snorted, "I love many, I even love Professor Snape once in a while," Blaise chuckled slightly, recognizing the old Pansy that had disappeared slightly over the last weeks. "But the fact that you also love many, including blood-traitors and muggle-borns, who you have always told me you despised, makes me incredibly ravin' mad!" Pansy gave him no warning before she slapped him. He was taken by surprise, and he fell onto the moist grass.

"We've always had an open relationship, Pansy, we've even brought our own date when the two of us were the only ones supposed to dine together or have a drink! But I won't argue with you anymore, cant we just say that you were right and I was wrong, and we all lived happily ever after until the next fight came…?" Blaise looked hopefully at Pansy, who was now struggling to not to shout a line of fine curse words she had picked up over the years.

She held her head for a while before answering him, and then she suddenly bent down, her face only inches from his, "But I WAS right, you stupid annoying jerk!" She yelled, but quickly pushed him down on his back, mounting him very elegantly. She leaned down and kissed him fiercely on the lips, giving him no chance to escape. That was how their relationship had always been, ever since third year. Blaise was one of her bad habits. But he was normally on top, for no particular reason though.

Surfacing for air, Pansy immediately lighted a cigarette. It was another one of her bad habits. Blaise was surprisingly very anti-smoking, but if he made one comment about her smoking, he was begging for a fight and he knew it. The seducing fume being inhaled into her lungs soon escaped her lush lips, and Pansy sighed as the calm feeling wrapped itself around here like a blanket. This was her yoga, except that this didn't require as much movements and un-comfortable positions. It wasn't for her, yoga, she would get tired of it.

"Oy, what you two doing down here this late at night? It's forbidden for ye students to go wandering about at the grounds at three o'clock in the mornin', and y'know it!" A big hairy man was running over to them from the forbidden forest, the ground was shaking as he approached.

They weren't exactly looking innocent, Pansy with one foot on each side of Blaise, and Blaise with his hands holding Pansy's ties like he had done nothing else in his whole life. Pansy was still smoking her cigarette, and she wouldn't stop just because of the stupid Care of Magical Creatures teacher's presence. Hagrid should know by now that she smoked, because the whole school, including staff, had told her to quit. But some Slytherins hadn't made any comment, Pansy was quite sure they were doing it too.

"We're enjoying the fine view of the lake, it's on it's most beautiful at night, don't you think Professor?" She said in a low voice.

Hagrid put his hands on his hips and said, "It's just as beautiful in day-time, come back then and 'enjoy' it, or I'll have to report this to Dumbledore himself!" He pointed at the castle and dragged them up from the ground; tossed them rather.

"Merlin, thought he would be a little nice, but after all, he is half-giant." She said loudly, just to be sure that he heard her when she and Blaise had agreed to go peacefully up to the castle and return to the dungeon and their warm beds.

Blaise smirked, "Yeah, it's like they say; once a giant, always a giant." He snickered, thinking that he had thought up something really clever.

"You're stupid, aren't you?" Pansy smacked him in the back of his head. "He has never been a giant, he has always been half-giant. There's a difference, in case you haven't noticed, giants are a whole lot bigger and a whole lot dumber than Hagrid! Argh, you make me wanna wrestle with you sometimes!" She could see Blaise smirk in the corner of her eye, and she hit him hard in the stomach. He whined all the way down to the dungeons, even when they were neatly placed in the king-sized bed, he complained. "What can I do to shut you up?" She asked him, very irritated after listening to all the crap for a mere ten minutes.

But just as she turned to look at him, he had fallen asleep. He was talking in his sleep, she felt so stupid. He was saying loads of things, weird things, not in English. It was elvish if she wasn't mistaken; she had no idea that he mastered the tongue of elves.

"Blaise…" She gave him a little push. "I can't sleep when you're babbling about fairies, OK?" No reaction from the dark beauty lying there by her side.

She rose from the bed with the bed covers wrapped around her and walked to the blood-red sofa in the corner of the grand room. She put 'silencio' on Blaise and fell asleep before she could even put away her wand. The next day would be the first day of classes, and not many were looking forward to it, but Pansy loved it when they started school for real, 'cause that was when the intrigues began happening...

----

"Pansy..."

"Sod off." A cold hand was brushing away the black strands of hair from her face.

"PANSY!"

"Shove a sock in it, you old piece o' dragon dung!" She said with a raspy and tired voice.

She heard an annoyingly cheerful chuckle, "Don't be like that, I might have to tickle you! Anyways, you've got to wake up, breakfast's starting in only a matter of minutes, love." Blaise lifted her up, but she kicked him away.

"I can walk..." She groaned as she threw of the bed-covers and snaked her way around Blaise, heading for the walking closet he had hidden behind the whole length-mirror beside the bed. She felt his stare, giving her one of those thorough once-overs he ever so often gave her when she had her back turned to him.

She emptied her trunk, leaving all her clothes scattered about at the red-carpeted floor. There was loads of black, green and red. Almost no other colours. Well, there were a few purple, grey and blue items, but she had never cared much for them.

She chose a plain black halter top and a skirt that reached the ground if she didn't wear heels. It was black velvet, and a small Slytherin symbol was on her hip. She threw on the Slytherin robes she had bought recently in Hogsmeade, and hurried to the bathroom. Blaise was waiting for her when she was done and he looked like he had been waiting for hours.

"Girls always have to put on that darn make-up, you are much prettier without it, love, and it doesn't do you justice by far." Pansy loved how Blaise talked in the morning, he was always throwing compliments everywhere, and he even told Professor McGonagall that her tight hair-bun was very sexy once. Pansy advised him that he should drink a cup of coffee before each Transfiguration lesson after that, and he hadn't disagreed.

Pansy gave him a kiss before they climbed out the portrait of Salazar Slytherin down in the dungeons, and slipped her hand into his as they were wandering quite peacefully and alone up to the entrance hall. Their time-tables had been given to them in their common room, and Pansy had potions first. Once they got out of the dungeons, there were shouting and laughter roaming the castle, and a horde of first years from Gryffindor and Ravenclaw were running down the stairs and making their way to the Great Hall for breakfast.

The familiar scent of vanilla and cigarettes filled the air as she and Blaise stopped to wait up for a couple of friends by the stairs.

"Hello Draco." Pansy said.

"Hello Pansy," Draco was looking paler than ever, almost like a Goth with his black and green Slytherin robes. "You always know when I'm coming don't you? How do you do it?" Draco said with pure interest.

"Your smell," Pansy sniffed around him. "It's special, and it's just you. I guess you know what I'm talking about, it's you who have a fixation about vanilla." She said dreamily. It smelled good, though you wouldn't think it so. She had always fancied certain parts about Malfoy, but being with him became too much for her, he never dis-obeyed his father when he was asked to do things no normal parents would have asked their children, and he wasn't good at showing his emotions. That was what had bothered her most about the gorgeous and very tall blonde.

Draco and Blaise both shrugged their shoulders and grabbed her hands, pulling her into the Great Hall. They obviously thought that she had gone into some dazed memory or something, because they pulled her a little too hard when she began walking, and all three of them went flying in through the big doors. Everyone in there turned their heads and stopped talking.

Draco got up and brushed the dirt of his robes, "What you lookin' at? We aint no circus animals, find some other entertainment, you filthy little…" He muttered the last word to himself as he glared threatening at the students, especially the three sitting at the Gryffindor table. The raven haired boy sitting in the middle was grinning, hiding his laugh. The bushy haired girl sitting by him had a book covering everything in her face sparing her eyes, and the red-haired Weasley boy, who was towering both of the two others, was almost choking on a piece of his toast. They all turned to look at each other when they noticed that Draco was staring at them.

Pansy supported herself on Blaise as she rose gracefully from the floor. Draco's cheeks were hollow, she hadn't seen how thin he was until now, and when he removed his robes as they sat down, the black t-shirt showed that he was almost nothing but muscles and bones.

"You should eat, Draco, it's not healthy to be that thin." Pansy said worriedly as they sat at the end of the Slytherin table.

"You're thinner than me so you shouldn't accuse me of being thin, Pandora." Draco poked the bread on his platter with his fork.

Pansy wasn't used to being called by her real name; it was only Draco who did that. "You know I hate that name, Draco."

"Yes, and you know I hate it when you criticize me." He was now looking at her.

Pansy thought for a moment there that he was going to kiss her, but he was just on his way to stand up. She let out a sigh, and Draco quickly marched towards the doors. He had something in his hand, it looked like a necklace.

"You couldn't keep it to yourself, could you?" Blaise stood up and told Pansy to follow him. "He probably went for the dungeons; I know he likes spending time in one of those secret rooms." Pansy left the table as well, without even having as much as a little bite of her toast. But she wasn't hungry anymore anyways, so it didn't matter.

They paced down the stairs to the dungeon, expecting to see Malfoy standing there waiting for them and an excuse for Pansy's behaviour, but he wasn't there, neither was anyone else. It looked deserted down there, so they just kept walking further.

Blaise was touching the walls like he expected them to just open themselves for him, but nothing happened. Pansy told him it was no use, but when they reached the portrait, they heard the voice of a girl. And surely enough, they heard Draco too.

The girl's voice was whispering, "I can't tell them, they'll get so bloody angry and they'll kill you if I told them why I've been acting so strange." She sounded like she was of the angsty type, but Draco managed to calm her down obviously by whispering something Pansy and Blaise couldn't hear.

They looked at each other and both nodded at the same time. They said the password and the portrait opened to them, letting them see the sight of Draco Malfoy holding a girl with fiery red hair in his arms. She had a long black dress on, and a Gryffindor robe was on the sofa beside them. Her long fingers were pale, just as her innocent face was. It was little Miss Virginia Weasley he was holding in his embrace.

Pansy couldn't utter a word, neither could Blaise by the sound of his heavy breathing.

Draco looked at them, maybe for the first time in his life dumbstruck, and slowly let it sink in that he had to explain the rather awkward situation to them.

"Look, she's not like the other Gryffindors..." He began, but Blaise cut him off.

"Weaslette, you like us Slytherins, don't you?" Pansy quickly turned to Blaise.

"That's who you went out with? Ron Weasley's little sister?" Her eyes were spitting fire at him, he stepped back.

Draco sprinted between them just as Pansy was about to slap Blaise, "You know how Blaise is, and you shouldn't judge him since you were with Ginny's brother once!" Draco realized that this was perhaps not the right thing to say at that moment, so he shut up.

"Aha! I knew there was a reason why you were sneaking up to the Gryffindor tower all the time last summer! Well, now we're even, but Draco, please explain. This little secret of yours, has it been secret for long? A few days, months? Maybe more?" This was obviously not what Draco expected from Blaise after hearing that his girl-friend had been with a Weasley.

"Yeah," Pansy also turned to watch Draco grow more and more un-comfortable. "You like redheads now? Or have you always done so?"

Ginny, who was glancing from Draco to the two others each second, suddenly said, "He can love whoever he wishes, it's not for you two to control." She looked surprised herself.

Pansy gasped, "How dare you talk to me like that, you filthy blood-traitor!" She approached Ginny, but Ginny towered over her un-fortunatly, so it didn't have the effect it should've had. "Draco's father will never approve of you, and Draco knows it. He just wants you to be his little doll for a few weeks, don't you get that, Weaslette?"

Draco smiled genuinly at his two friends, "My father is dead."

"I inherited the whole Manor; my father had trusted me completely, leaving me everything! My mother will be allowed to stay there, but on certain conditions ofcourse." Pansy could see his icy blue eyes hunger for the power. Ginny, who was standing behind him, had grabbed hold of him and was now hugging him. "They won't hurt you, if they meant to they would've done it by now…" He whispered to her and she purred content into his shoulder.

"Don't tell me it was you who did it, Draco." Pansy was crossing her fingers, he couldn't have. They would figure out it was him, and Draco would be sent off to Azkaban.

Draco snorted, "I could only wish I had the guts to do something like that, do you know how powerful a wizard he was?" He supported his head on Ginny, who was just as tall as him.

"OK then, but still… What exactly was the cause of his death?" Pansy said casually.

Draco's gaze sort of wandered of to a different place, "I dunno exactly, the doctors said that he was hit by dozens of spells right in the chest at the same time, they didn't give me details…" Pansy creased her eye-brows at his answer, 'cause Draco always knew specific details about deaths, especially when he knew the person that had died.

"He deserved it in many ways though…" Blaise muttered, looking at Ginny who was looking frightened for some reason.

Draco stroke her neck gingerly, it seemed like she was the world to him.

Pansy met Ginny's chestnut brown eyes for a moment, "Pansy, you should know that my brother really adored you, he said that you weren't the hag everyone thought you were, and that you were the most beautiful girl he had ever had the pleasure to meet. Except for Hermione Granger that is, but that you already knew, right?" Ginny had now come to stand by Draco's side instead of hiding behind him.

Pansy felt a flicker of annoyance as Ginny said it; she knew very well that Ron fancied the mud-blood. "Yes, he sure told me. But how long have you two been together? And more importantly, why?"

"About three months now, and I'm with her because I love her. We're one; I have even tasted her…" Draco pushed away the long fiery hair from Ginny's neck and revealed two gaping holes of venom, the only blemish Pansy could see on her. Her eyes travelled down to Ginny's finger, and sure enough she had an exact copy of the ring Draco had. The necklace he had carried in his hand when he marched out of the Great Hall earlier was now on Ginny. Pansy knew she had seen it before, in some book about vampires. It protected them when they were exposed to direct sun-light and when they were touching something silver.

Blaise didn't look surprised at all; he just shook his head at Draco and kept his tongue. Ginny made a wheezing sound as Draco touched the bite marks. They weren't recently made, but they were only a few weeks old for sure.

Pansy stepped a little closer to them to get a proper look at Ginny, the vampiric features in the little girl's face were dramatic really. Once she had looked like a healthy and happy kid, but now her face was gaunt and hollow, just like Draco's had become over the last year. Red flashed in her eyes as Pansy tried to touch her pendant.

"I'd rather you not." Ginny said with a scowl that could kill you.

She backed away and grabbed Blaise's hand, "OK, but you should know that there's not many who will accept your relationship, at least not your Gryffindor heroes. Not that I know them, but they don't seem all that fond of Draco, considering that they have tried to hex him or curse him on every occasion they find fitting." Ginny could obviously see that Pansy wasn't cocky anymore, but that she was being sincere, which she normally wasn't.

"They'll adjust to it, one way or the other. I love Draco with all of my mind and heart," Pansy had heard that a vampire wasn't able to love, seeing that they weren't really alive. "And those fools who think that vampires cannot love," Ginny looked at Pansy. "they are wrong. If this isn't love, then it's fate. Maybe just pure lust and desire, but still, I feel like I'm alive around him, and that was why I came to love him in the first place. He wasn't the hero of the day, nor the good teacher's pet, he was the Slytherin that I truly ever felt was genuinely evil. I was drawn to his dark side, but also I found a good side, and I fell even deeper in love with him than I had been before." Her red hair lay so perfectly around her shoulders. She was truly beautiful.

"We aint got time for all this..." Draco said carefully.

Her sharp corner teeth disappeared as she waved her wand at her face. "Then it's time for class."

Blaise didn't move at all, even though Ginny and Draco had already walked through the portrait and disappeared in the dark dungeon. Pansy tried to get his attention, getting no response whatsoever.

"I knew there was something wrong with her when I saw her enter the Great Hall yesterday, her eyes were so vacant and her mouth always kept close. Draco had just taught her that spell; I could hear her thinking about it as she used it, getting rid of those pointy fangs." Blaise looked like he was about to break down and cry.

"You told me you weren't going to do that anymore! But it doesn't matter now, I guess… So, did you hear anything about how long she has been a vampire? I bet Draco's father wasn't attacked by spells at all, I think he was bitten, Blaise. Couldn't you see the malice in his eyes? Ginny is partly innocent I believe, but the fact that she was drawn to him because he was evil is probably because of Tom Riddle. Lucius Malfoy had slipped that diary into her bag when she came her for her first year, remember? We all had a good laugh at that." Pansy looked at her watch. "We can talk whilst we go to class."

"I didn't hear anything of how long she had been a vampire, but from that bite, it can only have been weeks." Blaise said, still dazed.

"Snap out of it, you have known about Draco dating her for a long time, haven't you? I could see it in your eyes when you saw them together; it was written all over your fore-head that you had read his thoughts from time to time."

Blaise was caught of guard with this accusation, "Well, I didn't think it would be wise to tell you, a confrontation about this with Draco would've ruined your friendship, and certantly it would ruin mine and Draco's!" But Pansy thought he handled it well.

"OK, but next time you hear something this important, tell me." She demanded, and he nodded, giving her a kiss.

The door to the potions classroom was open, and students were coming down the stairs, rushing past the two of them in such speed that all their books went flying. Pansy swore that she would hex them if they did it again, but none cared to listen to her. Blaise was just staring into the empty air, hypnotized it seemed. Professor Snape stepped up next to the black-board and said firmly, "Open your books at page 6 hundred and 65, quickly please." and thus the year had started.