Our Autumns in the Moon's Grace

by Elagabalus

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Second Moon – Chapter Two

Day 2

Draco heaved limply over the toilet as his stomach contracted painfully. It was one thing to wake up in a strange bedroom (he'd been through that), but it was quite another to wake up in a strange bedroom with a gawd-awful hangover (which he'd also been through, but it was still unpleasant). Clammy from head to toe, he wiped his mouth and dragged himself to sit against the tiled wall, which wasn't very far as it was rather cramped quarters in the bathroom. Not that what he could remember of the bedroom was any better – tiny single with only a thin sheet, only a light clutter of clothes.

To make matters worse, he couldn't remember a single thing from the night before. Well, maybe getting sick of that bar and then waiting for a while out in the cold air. A woman? Tall and dark? So at least last night's companion wasn't some freak he'd have to have a short, awkward talk with before running like the devil. Maybe she'd even be up to a couple more days of fun.

But there was also the weird-ass dream he thought he had. He'd been dying when someone had saved him by pulling their own heart of their chest, veins attached, and given it to him. He'd drunk from the veins as if they were straws and the heart was a piña colada or lava flow. But that would mean he was now a vampire, which couldn't be because the tiny square window above him showed that it was well past noon. Liquor did weird things to your head. Although he couldn't remember drinking all that much (point proven).

The door slid open. Expecting a buxom brunette, Draco was somewhat disappointed to see a skinny guy with black hair and glasses giving him an exasperated look from the doorway.

"You could have at least aimed for the toilet," he scolded. He looked younger than Draco.

He was about to snap back irritably at the sudden noise, but was surprised to realize that his head didn't hurt at all. It was his stomach that felt flabby and weak. "I did," Draco muttered. He tried to keep down any new onslaughts of nausea.

The boy looked a bit more sympathetic. "All right. I'll clean up. Go sit on the couch or something."

Draco eased cautiously to his feet. "Jeez, did I really drink all that much last night? I thought you were a babe with a real rack." The he realized something. "Oh. Wait. I'm still wearing my clothes from yesterday..."

The boy gave him a dry look as he flushed the toilet, Draco's vomit disappearing down the drain.

He gave himself a good look. "But. They're torn. And bloody." He eyed the other nervously. "You don't happen to be really into S&M do you?"

"Go sit on the couch," was all he said.

Draco was too confused, muddled, and nauseous to argue. The bedroom was also very small, and relatively unfurnished with just the midget-y single, a couple of lamps, and some pillows thrown about. He passed under another doorway, sans the door, into a sunny and somehow open feeling living-room/kitchenette that was only marginally larger than the bedroom. A two-seat sofa sat against the low wall separating the main room and the kitchenette. He sat down there and looked at the shabby, but apparently well-stocked bookcase, and the stacks of newspapers on the floor, some yellowed with great age and others looking hot off the press. There was an ancient CD player in the corner. He stared at the lack of TV or computer. A rather deprived (or even depraved) individual.

He should leave right now, Draco decided as he looked back down at the sorry and queer state of his coincidentally very expensive clothes. Yes, that would indeed be the best decision. But he stayed rooted to the spot for no apparent reason he could see.

The boy came out of the bedroom, wiping his wet hands on the sides of his jeans. He inspected Draco.

"Right. What do you want first, shower or talk?" he said perfunctorily.

"Err." The simple question seemed to send Draco entirely off-balance. His tone indicated there was something to talk about. Which made him uneasy and consequently want to dither for as long as possible. But if he took a shower, he would have to put back on his own clothes judging from the boy's boniness. And that idea was more horrible than actually staying filthy in the torn and bloody clothes.

The other seemed to realize something. He disappeared in the bedroom again for a few minutes before coming out with a bundle of what he thought were clothes. "Old cat lady upstairs gave them to me. Apparently her son died in one of the Middle East wars and kept all his clothes. She's a perverted old hag, but her cats are nice." He dropped the bundle on Draco's lap.

He stared down at them blankly. They looked at least twenty years out of style, but the whole retro thing was in so... Draco meekly wobbled to his feet and shuffled back into the bedroom and into the bathroom. As the hot (thank God!) water ran over his back, stilling his nausea a little, he felt himself getting back to his old self, which meant he was starting to get annoyed. Who was this brat to order him about? Okay, admittedly, he might have screwed around with the guy, but still. And what the hell was this 'talk' thing about? Draco'd (and maybe the boy too) gotten drunk, they'd slept together, end of story. What else was there to say?

He strode out of the bedroom, fully intending to give him a piece of his mind, but then the sight of the boy standing at the open window where a large, surly cat wallowed and peeling back a tin of sardines – for some reason it made him feel ill again. Draco sank once more into the slightly dusty sofa and watched as the boy placed the little tin in front of the absurd cat's nose, smiling a little as it inhaled the reeking, puny fish. He swore he could smell it from where he sat. The boy finally seemed to notice him again.

"She gets mad if I feed them," he informed him. "Says they're getting fat, but I don't much care. They don't seem to either."

"They could become diabetic," Draco said rather lamely.

"Do cats get diabetes?" the other asked.

"I don't know."

Unflustered, the boy just watched the cat for a while before sitting next to Draco, legs folded and facing him. He stuck out his hand. "Harry Potter."

What? What hairy potters? Was that a gay euphemism? Like, burly gardeners, or something? Draco just stared at him for a while.

Putting on an overly patient face and tone of voice, the boy said, "This is the part where you put your hand in mine and say your name. And then we shake our hands. And that doesn't mean vibrate. It means going up and down." He was grinning.

His brain seeming to snap back into focus, Draco scowled. "I'm not a goddam idiot. It's Draco Malfoy." He didn't shake hands.

Still grinning, Harry Potter put down his hand. "Glad to know both bits of info. I was starting to worry you'd gone brain-dead before –" He stopped and an entirely unamused, different expression came over his face.

"What?" Draco demanded. "What are you talking about?"

Potter bit his lip and looked down at his smooth, thin hands. "How much do you remember from last night?"

He frowned. "I remember a woman. Tall and dark-haired."

"That's all?"

"A weird dream."

"Describe it to me."

Feeling impatient, he said, "I don't see –"

"Just describe it."

Draco did, watching as Potter nodded and looked very unsurprised, almost satisfied.

He hesitated. "Okay. Whatever we discuss right now, promise not to freak out or do anything rash."

"Uh-huh," Draco said unconvincingly. He should have bolted the moment he saw the lack of computer and TV.

"Promise."

"Sure."

Potter looked aggravated, but didn't try to pursue it. "Look, how much do you know about vampires?"

Deciding that to humor him was the fastest way out of this situation, Draco replied, "What everyone else knows. That the asshole government won't release their documented names and want to classify them as a 'minority.'"

"Not that, I mean, what are they like?"

Draco shrugged. "Blood-sucking parasites who only wake up in the night, can't see their reflection, super strong and fast, and turn into bats."

Potter was grinning again. "Now, really. If vampires were all those things, how do you think the government would be able to keep tabs on them?"

He frowned. "I'm sure they have their ways. They're always keeping secrets."

"What if I told you that vampires aren't any of those things and that the government still can't keep a complete census of them?"

"I'd say you were off your rocker," Draco drawled, "but I already thought that."

"Well," Potter said slowly, unperturbed by the question on his sanity, "I'll tell you this. It's very hard to make another vampire. That's why there aren't that many and so they can hide themselves easily. You've heard about the bill that they want to pass that makes the test for vampirism mandatory for every citizen? Well, of course it won't go through because there would be too many people who would want to raise hell on the basis of invasion of their privacy."

"I don't see what this has to do with anything," Draco told him.

Potter sat back, looking at him. "Oh, it has a lot to do with us."

'Us'? Since when was that an appropriate pronoun to refer to them? He was about to object before the boy continued.

"Since you died last night."

Draco stared at him incredulously. "Right. And what's this? Heaven or hell?"

Potter shook his head, all seriousness. "No. You see, I made you into a vampire last night."

He didn't say anything. He was mentally planning to run right out the front door the minute the best chance popped up. Inspecting the very bony boy, he decided he would definitely have the upper hand if it came to a fist fight, but he didn't know if there were any knives or something hidden on him.

"For some reason," Potter said calmly, watching Draco carefully, "another vampire named Bellatrix Lestrange tried to kill you. And I say 'for some reason' because if it were for the 'obvious reason' she would have just cornered you and drunk you dry. But she brutally attacked you, and unless she's gone even further off the deep end, there was a special reason why she did that to you."

Now, if Draco hadn't thought the boy was fit for the loony bin before, he definitely did now. Bellatrix Lestrange was the name of his great-great-aunt who'd been six feet under, along with her husband, for decades now. His mother had told him about people like this. Creepy-ass stalkers who found out intimate details about you and skewed that information into their own fantasies.

Draco decided he'd had enough of this bull. "Right-o. As fascinating as all this is, I think there was definitely something I had to do today. So I'll be seeing you." He made to leave.

"Stop!"

And stop he did. Confused, he tried to reach for the door leading to what he hoped was an escape route. But his body seemed to refuse what his mind commanded.

"Sit."

And sit he did. Draco stared at the skinny boy, suddenly realizing that he was the reason he seemed unable to take control of his own limbs and ligaments.

"I was hoping I wouldn't have to do that," Potter said, clearly looking unhappy. "But you need to listen to this. I can't just let a fledgling vampire out into the world without any guidance."

What the hell? Since when did scrawny whack-jobs order around a Malfoy? Let alone the Draco Malfoy II?

"So you were attacked," Potter continued hurriedly. "I found you just as Bellatrix was leaving your body in an alley. I thought you were dead, you were so banged up."

"If I was so injured," Draco whispered icily, "then how is it I'm perfectly fine now?"

"The bodies of vampires automatically heal themselves," he explained.

"I see."

Potter scowled at him. "So when I found out you were still barely alive, I called an old friend who's a doctor now."

"Why didn't you just call nine-one-one?"

"If I had, they would've wanted to examine me too, and I don't want to give up my freedom," said Potter. "And I couldn't just call and leave. Bellatrix might have come back."

"Understandable."

The boy looked like he wanted very much to hit him, but just inhaled deeply. "So my doctor friend came and took us to his practice. But there wasn't anything he could do. You'd lost too much blood and had too many injuries. And then..." He paused as all traces of irritation faded from his expression. "You somehow managed to grab onto me. You said you... didn't want to die. That you knew what I was. That you wanted me to give you something."

"And you took that to be your vampire blood which you promptly sacrificed for my sake," he drawled.

Glancing back up at him, expression unreadable, he said, "In so many words, yes. Then the doctor helped me get you to my apartment." He gestured around them at the meager setting.

Draco sat back. He'd been trying to tell his legs to get back up ever since he'd sat down again, but the thought kept being squashed into oblivion so that he felt vaguely rattled.

Potter sighed. "You obviously don't believe me." He sat thinking for a second. "Look, I'll prove it to you." He stood and muddled around the kitchen for a moment before coming back into the living room and sitting down again. He had a sort of all-purpose kitchen knife in his hands, which looked quite sharp enough for general uses.

Draco felt himself go still as apprehension and a bit of fear rose in his gullet. Oh god. This is where he died. In some cardboard hovel at the hands of a maniac. It wasn't fair! He hadn't even turned eighteen yet! He hadn't even had a legal smoke or drink yet!

He flinched as Potter seemed to come at him with the knife, but only heard the ripping of fabric. He opened his clenched eyes to see the knife making a tear into the couch.

"See? Sharp enough," Potter said.

"Yes," swallowed Draco, "quite sharp."

He flinched yet again as the knife rose yet again. But to his surprise and somewhat delight, the blade merely bit into Potter's palm. He hissed at the pain, but showed Draco the very evident blood blooming across the cut. Draco, for some reason he couldn't fathom, felt suddenly very light-headed and almost sleepy. A delicious metallic scent filled him with an abrupt, voracious hunger. He stared at Potter's cut and only felt the faintest surprise, in his stupor, to see the blood slipping away from the lines on the unwrinkled palm and pouring back into the open wound. Before his eyes, thousands and thousands of cells regenerated and the skin knitted itself back together neatly until you could no longer tell the boy had just sliced into his palm with a kitchen knife.

Draco felt a sudden coolness in all of his organs. "So you are a vampire," he said slowly. "What is it that you want?" He glanced around. "Money? Not to be rude, but you seem in need of it." Bribes were always a good option.

Potter looked impatient. "I don't care about money! Haven't you been listening? I made you into a vampire last night. I'm trying to take responsibility for it."

"Right," answered Draco carefully, trying not to anger him. "But you don't exactly see me climbing eighty-story buildings, or lifting boulders, or instantly healing myself –" He cried out in pain as Potter grabbed his hand and sliced across his arm in the same moment. "Fuck! What the hell do you –"

"Watch!" the boy commanded.

And he watched. He watched, through that same torpor that overwhelmed all his senses, as the large gash on his arm sloppily spewed out streams of thick blood. Oh fucking Christ, he thought. This lunatic is going to make me watch with him as I bleed to death. But then his mind quieted when the same process worked on his own arm. The blood fled back to the cut and skin zipped itself back together.

He stared at his arm stupidly. "It itches."

"Don't scratch," Potter warned him. "It makes for weak skin which will be harder to heal later on."

"Oh," Draco said. "Mine was a lot faster than yours."

Potter frowned, but answered, "Well, you did take a lot of my blood last night. Actually, I think you could probably just change someone with less than ten ounces."

"Ten ounces," he repeated. "Why don't I remember anything you say happened?"

"Well, you were unconscious for a lot of it. Plus, you were really close to death. I think the closer you are, the less you remember after..."

"Ten ounces," Draco merely repeated.

Potter leaned toward him. "Are you okay? You look a little –"

A little what, he never discovered, because Draco had leapt up and ran to the open window. He vomited out into the open air though his stomach by now was surely empty. The fat cat, which had been dozing, protested by screaming and giving his face a good clawing. Draco cried out at the stinging pain on his cheek, but made a sort of groan/sob when he realized he could no longer feel the parallel cuts and there was no blood. He sank to the floor, burying his head in his arms. He kept repeating "Fucking Christ," to himself, as if the Holy Spirit himself would swoop down from the blue sky and erase such awful memories. The 'fucking Christs' ended when he realized he'd somehow transformed the words into 'sucking fritos.' He just kept his head in his arms, hoping if he finally had to look up he'd be back at Nott's or at least in his room at Malfoy Manor.

"Would you rather be dead?"

Unwillingly, Draco looked at Potter still sitting on his raggedy sofa. He had a rather sad and awkward expression.

"I don't know," he moaned. He clenched two handfuls of his hair. Okay. Time to pull himself together and take it like a man. So. He was a vampire. Not the end of the world. That meant he would never die. That no one could hurt him, judging by Potter's little demonstration. Didn't mean he had to give up life. He could still party. Could still...

"Hey," Draco said, looking up. "Can vampires still have sex?"

Potter started, not expecting that particular question. "Well, yes, but I don't think that's your biggest problem at the moment."

Draco stood, casually dusting himself off and feeling his old confidence settle back in. "But you see, there are no problems at all. All I have to do is get a hooker or something when I feel thirsty. They're always turning up dead, so no one will be wiser or actually even care."

Potter's confusion transformed instantly into anger. "You fucking idiot. Don't you realize that there've been indictments already against people suspected of doing just that? They only get off because the test for vampirism is inadmissible in a court of law. It's only a matter of time before some clever prosecutor finds a way around it."

"Okay, so maybe I'll switch to assholes who have a ton of people who hate them anyway," Draco said angrily. "I'll figure something out."

"You don't know the first thing about surviving as you are now," replied Potter fiercely. "You'll be killed before the week's over by some other vampire who hates stupid fledglings that threaten their existence."

"Load of bull," Draco sneered. "Vampires can't be killed. You just proved that to me."

"Oh, they can be killed," he said darkly.

"Oh, well alright," he sighed heavily. "I'll be sure to lay off the garlic and avoid churches from now on."

Potter laughed out-right. "You idiot! Garlic and churches!" His chuckles died. "No, I'm afraid a vampire's death is much more painful."

An abrupt knocking at the door startled them both. Potter's feet meet the carpet as he stood, frowning at the door. He maneuvered around the sofa and into the kitchen. Unlocking the door, he pulled it open. Smiling gorgeously, Bellatrix Lestrange stood in the hallway, her very friendly demeanor translating as sinister and predatorial. Potter instantly tried to slam shut the door, but she inserted a single heel. She flung the door back open and, before he could blink, gave Potter a swift punch to the stomach. He fell to his knees, the air knocked right out of his system.

Bellatrix stepped around him, eyes on Draco.

"My, my. Doesn't the little Malfoy heir seem different?"

A/N: Oh noes! A cliffie! Jeez, I never get to have such dramatic ones in WiF (shameless self-promotion).

"Hairy potters"... Pfft. THAT IS SOME FUNNY SHIT, MAN. Lol (for realz, shiznits.)