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Just a general notice: don't get used to this currently crazy-keen updating schedule. Unless you're already used to disappointment.
Guest - Still my favourite.

CHAPTER THREE - VAMPRISM IS NOT A GEOGRAPHICAL CONDITION
In which wands and tempers are lost, baskets and slaps are thrown, buildings are left and entered, and the milk is delivered.

"That curse always seems to throw you." Hermione commented lightly.
Malfoy glowered at the wand in his thin fingers. Not even a spark or a pop or some heat had emanated from Granger's wand. He might as well have been brandishing a twig he'd plucked from a tree, and Draco felt vaguely foolish. "Shut up."
"I did warn you it wouldn't work."
"Shut up."
"And you still doubted me."
"Shut your filthy face!"
"I thought Slytherins were supposed to possess intelligence and cunning."
He still had her wrist captured, so he pulled her up a little higher until she almost dangled off the floor like a fish on a hook. "And yet here I am," he snarled, "with your disarmed wand, and here's you, having dodged a killing curse on a theory and a technicality." The fact she hadn't even winced when he spat the Kedava curse in her face showed she had always been confident she wasn't in danger.
As if reading his mind she gave a blasé shrug. "Just another day at the office for me." All in that matter-of-fact corrective tone.
"Yes, I can see how you must have become accustomed to vast multitudes of people throwing killing curses at you on a daily basis."
Hermione narrowed her eyes. "This is my job, Malfoy - I've been through this all before. So I know I can help you, if you let me."

He dropped her wrist in disgust, as if her sentimentality was contagious, and folded his arms over his chest.

Typical defensive behaviour, Hermione noted.

"Don't think I'll be grateful, Granger, if you make me your next Cause and try to help me or neuter me or whatever deviousness you have planned. Remember, I got the last person who thought they saw good in me killed."
The softness in Hermione's eyes went flat. Her voice hardened. "Don't you boast about it."
"Dumbledore was a foo-"

There was a crack as Hermione hit his jaw. It wasn't as hard as marble; it was more like slapping ice. Draco's cheek smarted, not with pain, but with the shock of the heat from her palm on his cold skin.

Twin fires flared in Hermione's usually dull-brown eyes and she whirled to her feet. "You don't ever get to use Dumbledore's name."
Malfoy sneered in disgust. "You're supposed to be a witch, for Merlin's sake. Yet all you do is throw punches like a common oafen Muggle down at the pub."
Hermione seized her wand, abandoned when she'd slapped Malfoy. "You'd rather I'd curse you?"
Malfoy, to his credit, didn't shy away when the wand-end had turned and was now levelled at his face. Instead he merely drawled, "Any action that doesn't involve you making physical contact with me is preferable."

His barb was meant to be another slur on her bloodlines, calculated to make her lose control. But Hermione irrationally focussed on his – clearly sarcastic – acquiescence in letting her hurt him. Since he'd given his permission, Hermione immediately rebelled against fulfilling his wishes.

Draco watched impartially as the witch before him took great heaving breaths in an attempt to calm herself down.

Why was Malfoy able to rile her to the point she forgot to think? Whenever he was near her she couldn't contain her temper, couldn't construct a decent argument or retort. She certainly couldn't formulate any curses – magical or verbal. She went from zero to violent with no middle ground. And he was just sitting there calmly in his hospital bed, looking for all the world like an ashen-skinned angel.

And the logical part of Hermione finally weighed in to argue that hexing a patient would not be a good look for her, professionally speaking. So she made up her mind. She was fairly proud of the evenness of her voice when she told the Vampire before her, "Due to our past history, I'll have another Officer assigned to your case."

Then she walked out.

When he was certain she wasn't monitoring him through the keyhole or returning for round two, Draco allowed himself to raise a hand to his cheek. Granger's slap had caused his fang to slice inside his cheek, and blood welled inside his mouth.

His cheek still burned – not with pain – he didn't think he had those receptors anymore, but with warmth. He wasn't surprised. Granger had been crackling with typical self-righteous fury. Her eyes had practically been aflame with it, like she was burning up from the inside.

That's what life feels like, his mind reminded him.
Felt like.

He dropped his hand from his cheek.

Fuck this. He was going home.

Hospital couldn't cure him, and he was not some dispossessed House Elf so he was certainly beyond Granger's meagre abilities. He wouldn't take anyone's pity, or charity, or help. Help was a weakness and anyone who claimed they wanted to help him would only build him up until he depended on them, so they could make him fall down again twice as hard.

He wrenched himself out of bed as a small voice inside him – sounding oddly smug and like Granger this time, sneered,
Running away to the Manor won't work.
Vampirism is not a geographical condition.

But his parents probably didn't know what had happened to him; they were rarely aware of current events and drifted aimlessly about in the Manor since the war. He could turn up at home, say he'd been on a drinking bender or had a bad potion from Knockturn, or some such nonsense (or even say nothing at all), and he could step back into Draco Malfoy's old life. Just for a little bit.

Draco shrugged on his robe. As if mocking him, Granger's woven hamper sat by his bedside, another reminder of her and by extension, his condition. Was she really petty enough to send a hamper as a thank-you to his killers? Clearly, the Mudblood was some sort of unhinged; otherwise what sort of person bought a picnic basket to someone's deathbed? A woven wicker basket. Woven, as in, sticks bent and twisted together. How depressingly Muggle.

He petulantly swept the basket off his bed.

The picnic hamper crashed to the floor and he waited for some nurses to hurry in at the noise. He froze stock-still for a moment, his ears twitching, but life carried on down the corridors. Too bad if he'd fucking fallen out of bed or having a seizure or something. To be fair, he had thrown a lot of things when they'd first broken the news of his... condition.
Mugs.
Chairs.
Beds.
People.

It was a miracle Granger had the guts to come into his room; whether she knew him or not, he had heard them whisper about how dangerous he was, and it had rather gone to his head, to be honest. Everyone else had knocked at his door (oftentimes walking briskly away when it became evident he was still inside), and if they gathered the courage to attend to him, they stood awkwardly in the hallway and talked at him from across that great distance. Granger had walked right in and plopped herself down at his bedside, and Draco didn't know if it was thoughtless stupidity or a refusal to be cowed. She had been a Gryffindor after all, so it was probably the former dressed up as the latter.

Curious, Malfoy peered over the edge of the bed to study the spilled contents of the basket she'd brought with her.

Scattered around the linoleum floor was a silver-coloured pamphlet entitled, "So now you have officially joined the species known as the Living Dead"; a factsheet of his tolerances and allergies; a guide entitled "Getting your Way with Vampiric Thrall: when is it acceptable to use it?"; a calendar-card-sized almanac of dawn and dusk times for the current year; a membership form for the Society of Tolerance to Vampires – probably chaired by Granger –; a labelled poster of the human venous system (with the arteries coloured a sickly 'don't drink here' green); and some Bloodpops from Honeydukes.

"Bloodpops," Draco hissed.

And this girl was supposed to be an expert?

Hermione sat at her kitchen table, listening to the rain and checking over her case notes for the day. Although technically 'today' had ticked into 'tomorrow' a few hours ago, so she was – more accurately – writing yesterday's case notes.

Patient 76152 has refused initial stages of palliative treatment and seems unsupportive towards any course of rehabilitative care.

A sodden owl at her window delivered more unhappy news, and Hermione updated her records accordingly.

Patient 76152 has also recently checked out of the hospital.

Along with her hopes of securing her funding. Then her impartiality reassociated the name she'd been trying to block.

Patient 76152 is Draco Malfoy, her brain reasserted. You were supposed to look after him. Instead he tried to kill you – which you should have expected – then you hit him, over which you should have better control, and now his whereabouts are unknown. Great way to win over the only Vampire that you could have signed up for your study.

The doorbell to her apartment chimed and Hermione muttered, "Really! I know I asked for my key back, but how many times I have told him to just Floo in..."

She wrenched the hallway door open.

The milk pints patiently sat on the welcome mat (Charmed of course, to be anything but welcoming for unexpected visitors). Hermione was about to stoop down to pick them up when she froze.

Thunder clattered above the building. The neon lights bathing the hallway flickered in time with the lightning outside.

There, at the end of the hall, stood Draco Malfoy.

Hermione muffled a little squeak of surprise.
Another flash of lightning allowed a freeze-frame of rain dripping off Malfoy's jaw and threading down his robes.
The hallway plunged into darkness again.
Another bull-whip crack of thunder. The lights strobed.
Malfoy stood in directly front of her now, no more than a hand-span away from her. His long fingers grasped the edge of her open door.
"Why're you here, Malfoy?" she asked, unconsciously echoing the question he'd asked when he first saw her earlier in the day.
Malfoy leant in until his face was an inch away from her. She noted his eyes were grey flecked, like granite, and mesmerising with vampiric Thrall.

"I'm here to kill you, Granger." A feral smile escaped the thin pressed line of his lips. "Invite me in so we can begin, will you?"

His voice fizzed in her brain. Slowly, Hermione opened the door wider.

Malfoy's hollow smile widened too, allowing shadows to spill out from behind his fangs.

Let's see how often I can end a chapter imperilling Hermione's life, shall we? It's great fun. So far we're three for three.