Disclaimer, as found in chapter one, applies.

Decrease of movement; switch transition

Researching potions that could affect vampires became an intrinsic part of my life; so much so I withdrew from school, with bizarre support from my mother, to pursue my talents. It helped to spend a lot more time away from the buoyancy of the Cullen's and the condemning looks from Bella. I liked Bella for the most part, but whenever it became topical discussion about me and my magic, she seemed to watch me with the most hateful eyes.

I felt kind of sorry for her. She was the odd being out. But I dare not think that around the overprotective Edward and revised occlumency practice in my spare time. Wistfully, I hoped it would work to keep him out, for at times when the vampires got ahead of themselves with ideas of my magical ability, I didn't always want the room being notified of my inexpertise. Or lack, thereof, of Godliness. And it wasn't that I wanted to be adored, but I liked the positive attention.

I started brewing The Golden Fix. It started out at molten gold. One drip a day to sit in the bottom of a heated cauldron and then the wax of a candle burned under the full moon. It was all terribly gothic and I wasn't even sure this potion was going to work.

I didn't have much faith in my ability to brew it either.

Which is exactly why I didn't want Edward in my thoughts. Every time he caught a whiff of insecurity, he seemed to shine when he made it common knowledge that I was lacking confidence. He seemed hell bent on ruining this for everyone.

I knew exactly the day that came when he couldn't get inside my head any more; he walked into the Cullen's house, where Alice and I sat discussing what we -she- could do for Jasper's birthday. I was quite keen to avoid delving into the celebrations, for what it would look like to all those watching. And I didn't want to give myself or Jasper false hope for something that just wasn't going to happen; romance and passion. Not like that anyway, and not right away, and certainly not whilst I was being paid by his family to research vampires.

I frequently betrayed my conviction with straying thoughts of lips and tongues and potions to keep one safe from the risk of vampiric poison. And these kinds of things were starting to get in the way of my mental health; I feared people knowing the things that should be private to my own mind and certainly hated the visible inner battle. Occasionally I would keep myself awake at night with paranoid delusions of the Cullen's and Bella all sitting around laughing at my plight.

Alice wouldn't let up over designing a party for Jasper. 'We are going to have some of our friends from Denali down.' She was saying as Edward walked through the door. I wondered to myself what kind of friends she meant, but Edward didn't do his usual thing of answering my thoughts. He turned to Alice and looked at her quizzically.

'I don't think Jasper would like a fuss made out of him.'

Surely not, you invading prick! I thought to myself. Edward then turned to me and I waited for the onslaught of over communicated vulgarities.

'Have you stopped thinking?' He asked me. I looked up towards his messy copper hair and thought loud and clear about how he shouldn't let Bella get overheated with her ministrations. 'Draco?' He asked quite seriously.

'No, no. I'm thinking.' I smirked at him and turned to Alice. 'You were saying?'

Edward interrupted Alice; 'Isn't it past your bedtime?'

'Oh no, I'm as high as a kite on Pepper Up Potion.' I said, smirking again but this time with sincere cruelty. I was glad he couldn't hear me rambling about how my services were going to go towards this ungracious prick. I was glad he couldn't hear the sorrow of wasted teenage years.

'Ignore him, Draco.' Alice said to me. 'He's pissed off that being immortal is coming between him having a normal relationship with Bella.'

Edward growled low in his throat at Alice and I giggled like a school girl gleefully. Strictly speaking, being between two sparking vampires is not practical common sense, but it excited the hell out of me. 'Leave off, Alice. You don't know what you're talking about.' Edward stalked away.

I wasn't very keen on being the source of so much irritation between the Cullen's. It seemed that my presence in their lives was breaking a very sacred destiny. Alice would say that as someone's decisions change, so does their futures, and by some miracle decisions were changed with resultant immigration of the Malfoy's to Forks. But her words were no comfort for me, who often delighted in the dangerous rows that would break out between the vampires, or sulked at their existence.

The Cullen's really did have me questioning my sanity. The intoxicating feeling of living on a knife edge had me indulging so heavily in my quest for knowledge of magical beings, I found myself a few times wishing I had paid more attention in Care of Magical Creatures and Defence.

'I need to go to Seattle,' I said absently to Alice.

'I knew you would say that,' she said superiorly. I pouted at her. 'Do you want to go now?' She asked quite eagerly. I worried my lip between my teeth. 'Oh come on, I'll drive you!'

'You have school, remember...'

'I do indeed.' She said as if she was saying "so what". I nodded at her in submission.

'That would be great.' I stood up from the white couch and ruffled her brown pixie hair. 'What would I do without you, m'dear?'

She smiled wide at me. 'You'd just be an arrogant, British toffee!'

I didn't quite understand her meaning, but the friendly fire was enough to have me trying to chase her for a few seconds before the impossibility of it wore my determination out. 'Come,' she demanded, taking my arm and wrapping it over her shoulders, 'let's go. We can book into a hotel and buy you clothes there.'

'Alice, I think I need to tell my mum I'm off for a few days.'

'Can you phone her?'

I nodded and she gave me her cell phone to use. 'It's under Malfoy.' She explained and I fumbled the whole way to the car trying to figure it out, finally getting to the number and quickly telling my mother what I was up too. I didn't feel rebellious, like a teenager should; I just felt longing for Jasper's cool, collected presence as if that was my rebellion.

I dozed off against the pulsating window, the road beneath us mapped out by a tapping to my head. Sharply woken up by a prod from Alice, I glared and stretched whilst she said: 'Wake up, pretty boy!'

'Are we here?' I asked with kind amusement. 'Or have you just woken me up because you need the company?'

'As a vampire, Mr. Malfoy, we don't feel time as you do.'

Alice blanked out for a few seconds, then. As a sign for jinxes and curses, the glazed eyes and vacant look of Alice's visions had taken some time to get used too. 'Course you don't.' I agreed, stepping out of the car and walking sleepily to the front of the hotel.

I looked up. The Alexis, said the sign and I wondered how wonderful Alice's choice would be. She shuffled next to me and I bit back the urge to ask her what she had seen. It wasn't polite, in my eyes, to ask her to share things so personal and to be honest, I didn't want her to reveal anything about me.

In our room, Alice turned to me. 'What did you need to come to Seattle for?' She asked. 'And don't you need to be at home to brew The Golden Fix?'

I humphed. 'I hadn't thought about that.'

'What will happen to it?' She queried with quaint dismay. I grimaced and walked towards the bathroom with a kind of pompous strut.

'It will spoil, I suppose.' The door slid into the catch and my hands worked the lock.

And then I let myself freak out.

I was intensely aware of how dangerous my liaisons with the vampires were becoming, and how my research could affect their entire lives and further more how many people were relying on it. They could tear me to pieces if they found me guilty of failing and almost no one would know of it. Because these vampires weren't registered by magical signature...

These vampires weren't registered by magical signature.

They weren't magical vampires at all! There was no guarantee that anything I found out would be useful at all.

I had read the books I had hired out from The Olympic Library, which seemed reluctant to tell me anything at all about vampires. There was a wealth of information about werewolves and Jarvey dragons.

It all seemed so... geographical.

I worried myself all through showering. I could see brief flashes of Jasper and Alice's faces when I told them my upsetting news; that there really, really was less of a guarantee that anything I thought would work, would. And how my reluctance to try my potions or spells on them had doubled, even tripled, since walking into the bathroom.

I wasn't too keen on telling any of the Cullen's this information, but the smug looks on Bella and Edward's faces when I released the news cemented my feelings of guilt and dread. Never before, not even earlier that day when it was funny, was I so appreciative of my ability to block my mind.

But Jasper would feel the decomposing faith. Oh God, I groaned.

I composed myself as best I could before leaving the bathroom. Alice stood looking at me with painfully kind eyes and I smiled back, grateful that she would read my facial qualms as bashfulness for the half naked state I stood in.

I was right, for in seconds she was holding out clothes for me. 'You were in there such a long time.' She started explaining and I went and hid behind the door to of the bathroom to change into the pyjamas she gave me. 'So I decided to go into town and alleviate a shop of some of their stock.'

I smiled rebelliously to myself. I knew I should feel wrong for stealing, but it didn't feel the same magical to muggle. Magical to magical was another thing altogether for me. 'Ah, ridding people of their livelihood?' I asked teasingly.

'I hardly think the Gap ill be at a loss for these.' She said as I came out of the bathroom, quite pleased with my illegal wears.

X

'What did you do to the bathroom last night?' Alice asked me as I sat on the bed with a new set of books laid out in front of me.

I let my eyes stray to her from A Guide to Washington's Weirdest, which was turning out to be amusing yet not at all helpful on my quest, and asked her what she meant.

'I could hear the shower and your breathing, your heartbeat too, but then it all just disappeared as if it was never there in the first place. And I wasn't sure I wanted to disturb you, so I decided that if you weren't out fifteen minutes after I got back with the clothes then I was going to break the door down.'

I laughed because any competent witch or wizard would have realised the effects of a silencing charm and would never have asked what it was; Alice's ignorance amused me. 'I used a charm that makes anyone outside I construct it around, unable to hear anything within that space.'

'Wow...' She breathed. 'You know, I've always considered it to be taboo to ask you to do magic. I know Carlisle asked your mother, but he seems to get away with a lot of things. I guess I wasn't sure how you'd react...' She grew silent for a while and patiently I waited to see if she would say anything more. 'But what else can you do?' She asked in a rush.

'That would be a very long and very tiring demonstration, Alice.'

'So you can do a lot then?' She inquired with awe. I nodded my head. 'Well what was the first thing you learnt, can I see that?'

'Oh, that would be a hard one. The first spell I perfected was on the train to Hogwarts and it was a hex.'

'As in an affliction?'

'Yes.'

'Who did you use it on?'

'On my friend.' I said, smirking.

'Well what's the worst that could happen?' I didn't like her semantics. I shook my head, no. 'I'm asking you, as my friend, to show me something cool!' I ignored her whilst my head began to spin with the temptation. 'Please, Draco... nothing will happen that's bad.'

'We don't know that, Alice.' I said as I returned my focus to my book. I pretended that Sewer Goblins were infinitely more interesting than her pleading. Please, please, please... she kept on saying until my temptations got the better of me and I flung a stinging hex at her. I hadn't even looked up from the text in front of me, but the cry of pain she emitted was enough for me to know I had had got her.

'I'm hungry,' I said to her, ignoring her sudden giddy happiness, 'I'm going to have a rare steak.'

I smirked all the way down to the restaurant, glancing out of the window with gleeful satisfaction at the stars. There in the sky, silver dots rained down on us all like beacons of trust and for a second my heart lurched to be near Jasper.

X

The library staff were becoming less and less helpful on each returning visit. About three days into my stay in Seattle, I returned all the books I had loaned, and when I was met with despising stares from the staff I made my decision that Seattle was of no help to me on the vampire department.

I held a heady disinclination to acquire information about vampires in this strange and foreign land. I was becoming more and more inclined to call upon help from Britain, which certainly seemed to have more relations with vampires, at least visibly.

I wasn't even sure where I mentally stood on this pursuit of helping the Cullen's. I knew it would mean a lot to them to ease their burning thirst. It would help Jasper. And any other information I garnered on the way was a bonus for their broadening horizons.

It also pleased me to think of the possibility of making a career out of my talents. A nice black market trade, I thought. From the little I got out of my mother on the subject, it was clear that vampires were more ostracised than werewolves. Try as I might, she forbid me to ask any more, claiming she didn't know anything other than what she had already told me.

I had a despising thought that her lack of authority on the subject was due to my father.

I told Alice as I ate breakfast in our room that I thought I had exhausted Seattle for the time being. She seemed to brighten at the possibility, even though she was reluctant to let me stop studying.

'I need a couple of days to think.' I said.

'Cant you speed up your thoughts with a spell?'

I looked at her reproachfully. 'You can't do everything with magic,' I said to her, 'and if there is such a spell, I don't know of it.'

'Honestly, what did they teach you at school?'

I grinned blackly. 'Oh, nothing much. I learned most of my hexes through Dark Magic articles.'

'Oh here we go,' she said, 'I'm the snake, so hear me hiss!'

I started. 'When ever have you heard me talk about Slytherin?'

'Slytherin?' She questioned.

'Yes, Slytherin, my house at school. I'm sure you can acknowledge what mascot my house held?'

'A snake.' She said as if it was old news.

'Yes.' I felt that onslaught of paranoia; I imagined all the Cullen's sitting around and laughing about me and for a second I wondered whether I would have to try a crucio on them all.

'It was just a good guess, Draco.' She said, trying to calm me down. 'You need to relax, you have gone red in the face.'

I glowered at her, 'You know what?' I asked. 'Sometimes I wonder whether you and your family are just having me on.'

'You are so platinum.' She growled at me. 'So bloody self important, you know that?

'It's like just because you have magic, you're above us all. I bite my tongue when you're reproachful to Edward because it's funny to see him so off balance, but you hedge everything with your abilities like it's the most important thing in the world.'

I suddenly felt embarrassingly like the Ministry, but my anger flared over my humiliation. 'That's rich coming from a vampire that thinks it's okay to thieve.'

I felt empowered for a second. 'Well please remove those articles from your person and I'll take them back where they came!' She said, making a menacing move towards me.

'And I'll just stop brewing The Golden Fix, shall I?'

She looked so angry for a second that I felt a thrill of power over come me. I did feel important; enough that it was okay for me to throw caution to the wind around such predators. Alice started laughing though, and my fury diminished with her tinkling sound. 'We shouldn't fight about anything, should we?'

'You're just saying that because I've threatened to take the potion away,' I argued with a weak edge to my tone.

'That's unfair and you know it. If you haven't noticed already, Draco, my family and I like having you around.' I looked into her face and noticed a truth laying there. I wanted to believe her as much as she wanted me to believe. I let my guard down and allowed her words to comfort me, because I did have fun with the Cullen's, outside of the research I was doing for them.

'Bella and Edward don't like me.' I said. I crossed my arms defiantly, even though she had already won me over.

'Look,' she started to reason, sitting on the bed in front of me, 'It's hard for them at the moment. Bella holds this incredible secret that she can't share with anyone, except us vampires. And all she really has is us, because none of the other kids at school want to associate with her because of Edward being a Cullen.

'And Edward is trying to hold together his want for her... He lusts after her blood, knowing that the high he would receive from her would be the grandest he has ever known and will ever know, and it hurts him to not be able to be a normal teenage boy. Even for one day, just for her.'

'And those are the reasons that I should sympathise with them?' I asked with kindling indignation.

'Next to you, Draco,' Alice said softly, 'Bella is further cemented as the human. She is the only one in her group of friends who isn't gifted. And in Edwards eyes, it must be hard to watch a normal kid walk around with the kind of glitter you possess. He fears that Bella only likes him because of his immortality, and all the fun stuff that comes with it, but you bleed like she does so why wouldn't she want someone like that?'

'So you think they are jealous of me?'

'I know it, Draco.' She said firmly. I wondered if she was trying to placate me, but I held my tongue from saying so. 'Come on, let's check out of this place. Let's go home.'

X

I couldn't rest at home. I had given Alice orders to tell the Cullen's not to come by asking for information for a couple of days, but just as they lust for blood I lusted for their presence. I missed their infectious energy that helped spawn me on in aiding them and as I sat alone for a couple of days, busying myself with mindless tasks, I started to itch to get back to it.

I also started to resent the lack of wizarding information on the web.

So on the third day of being home at Forks, I called Alice with resignation and asked her to help me find something fun to do. She told me she would come pick me up and it would be a surprise. I wondered whether she had seen that I would call, but it had become common knowledge between us that I didn't ask and she didn't tell.

We drove for a couple of miles in Emmett's truck. I felt small in the massive car even though I kind of liked the jostling around as we drove off road. Lowering myself out of the car, I came face to face with the clan of Cullen's.

Each and every one of them had humoured eyes. Behind Edward stood Bella, who looked at me warily and for a second I wanted to shout at her to stop being silly; I had gone through a war, for Merlin's sake! What was romantic about that. But then I noticed Jasper, who stood looking at me with an unmatched intensity that whilst making me feel weird, also warmed me from the core.

Emmett cried hello to me with brotherly affection and Rosalie ran to give me a hug. Carlisle looked keenly at me, his eyes following as I said hello to every one in turn.

We stood in the middle of a meadow, covered on all sides by tall imposing trees. 'How far are we from muggles?' I asked the group.

'Oh the humans can't see us here.' Jasper said, moving towards me. I thought I saw him twitch to touch me but he held his distance. I held my composure.

'Do they come here?' I asked with precision.

'Now and again, but it's pretty hard to get here for them.' Jasper said.

'We just drove here!' I said, pointing towards the car.

Emmett came towards me, all huge and grinning. 'Off the road, silly. We know the path because we know it, if you follow me. But to them, the humans, it's all a bit trickier.'

'You sound worried, Son.' Carlisle said to me, resting a hand lightly on my shoulder.

'I'm not worried, as such. I just thought it would be a nice open space to fly in.'

'Fly?' Edward asked with incredulity.

'Yes, fly my broom.' I said, hard.

'Your... broom?' He replied.

'I have to see this.' Emmett said from beside me.

Jasper looked at me with ferocity.

'I think we should begin.' Alice said, bouncing away from the group into the middle of the open space. 'Draco, would you come here?' She asked me.

I moved as fast as I could. Beside her, I looked over the group who now stood to face us. 'Okay, what's the surprise?' I asked after a couple of agonising moments of silence.

'Do that stinging hex on me.' She said with clarity, so everyone could hear.

'Oh no,' I said defensively, 'I am not going to hurt you in front of a coven of vampires!'

'It's alright, Draco. You wouldn't die anyway, remember?' Edward said mysteriously.

I must have been startled enough that the paranoia caused me to loose grip on my magic, because gold sparks flew from my wandless fingers. The ground singed where they hit and I was acutely aware of Bella's eyes wide and frightened. Jasper growled low and hard at Edward, though he visibly cooled when Carlisle placed a hand on his shoulder.

'Sorry, but no.' I said with conviction. Alice started to do that begging thing again and the flare of temptation was undeniably hard to resist. 'Anyway, I could get in serious trouble for performing magic in front of a muggle...' I said, pointing to Bella.

'Don't call her that.' Edward said.

'In front of someone devoid of magic.' I said bitterly and the flash of irritation across Edward and Bella's faces was enough to make the insult worth the backlashing whack from Alice across the shoulder. 'I can't reach there with my wand to heal, you know.' I said to her whilst she smiled at me, letting me know she had put me in my place.

I personally thought the idea of insulting someone by calling them muggle was a far cry from what could be considered immoral in my world.

'How would anyone know that you had done magic in front of humans?' Rosalie asked me.

'Well, I'm not quite sure they would know,' I faltered. All eyes looked at me hopefully now. I was unsure why; they had all seen magic from my mother. 'But if they found out, I could go to Azkaban.'

'That's the prison your father's in, isn't it?' Edward said, happy in his bite mark.

'Uhuh,' I agreed, using every fibre of my being to sound detached from the implications Edward had hit me with. Mother must have told him, I thought.

'Just do it, blondie.' Emmett said.

'Oh go on, Draco. We want to see what happens.' Rosalie explained.

'I saw it,' Edward said, gesturing to Alice, 'And it wasn't that interesting.'

I lost myself again then, reflexively whipping my wand from my back pocket and pointing it at Edward, all the while screaming stupefy! and watched, horrified ,as a red beam of light struck the vampire in the middle of the chest and knocked him clean over.

Flashes and blurs crossed my vision as the Cullen's all moved to check on Edward. 'You've killed him!' Bella was screaming, launching herself across the green at me. 'You fucker! You've killed Edward!'

'I have not!' I yelled back, my wand pointing at her stalking form. I made wide birth of her and ran beside the Cullen's, who were just staring at Edward and unmoving. 'Rennervate.' I said quietly, flicking my wand. I hadn't been prepared for Edward to not move straight away.

My heart started to palpitate with fear.

And then Edward was on his feet a second later.

He was looking at me and smiling. The biggest smile I had ever had him direct at me.

'That was incredible.' He said.

'What happened?' Carlisle asked, as I collapsed onto the ground and sat cross legged, dumbfounded and brittle. Jasper moved a little closer to me.

'Nothing. Nothing happened,' I felt a burst of indignation, 'I was knocked out cold.'

I snapped my head up. 'You mean it worked?' I asked.

'Was that what it was supposed to do?' He asked me.

'Yes. Exactly what it was supposed to do.'

'Do some more!' Cried Emmett. I didn't really feel like it.

I turned my gaze to Edward again. 'Do you feel okay?' I asked him sincerely.

'Fine.'

'Do me a favour,' I asked, 'I want to test you, to make sure you're alright. Will you run the length of this meadow for me, a couple of times?'

Edward took off at once. 'Another one, another one!' Emmett crowed, louder and more hyper than before.

'No, not until Edward is back.'

Edward fluttered around us enough times that I got impatient and asked him to stop. I was feeling strangely decomposed, my hands dropped in my lap like an ill person. Coming back into himself fully, I looked at him and asked: 'And?'

'A hundred percent.' He was still smiling. I wondered whether a crucio would sort that out.

'Now?' Emmett asked. 'I want to be next.'

'Well what do you want me to do?' I asked him dubiously.

'I don't know!' He said, bounding closer. 'Anything.'

I considered it for a moment or two. The possibilities were endless. 'Well if he can't come up with anything for you,' Rosalie said to her husband, 'then I'm switching places.'

Ingenious, I thought to myself. I looked up and smiled so wickedly, I thought the devil would come up and shake my hand. Considering my present circumstances, it was a possibility. I made Rosalie and Emmett switch clothes. With a quick flick of my wrist, Emmett was wearing a dark blue cashmere dress, and a purple scarf whilst his wife wore his jeans and shirt. 'There,' I said, 'two for the price of one.'

It should have been embarrassing for them, but they laughed so hard I thought they would make it hail.

'Oh goodness, that was funny.' Alice said to me.

'Who's next?' I asked the group, looking up to them from my place on the ground. I was unaware that Jasper had sunk himself next to me, until I couldn't find him in the crowd. 'Carlisle?' I offered.

'An honour,' he said to me with a half bow. 'I want one of the ones we can feel though. I do not want to end up wearing someone else's clothes.'

'I'm tempted now you say that.' I thought for a moment. 'Actually, Carlisle, what did you say?'

He began to repeat himself and I muttered a silencio his way. His deep voice cut off instantly, even though his mouth still moved. A collective astonishment rung around the room. 'He says he can't feel it,' Edward relayed for Carlisle. 'He's asking to do something else.'

I removed the charm and pointed my wand at Carlisle and cast the same stinging hex I had hit Alice with in irritation. The same one that brought me here, into this crazy lot of immortals who wanted me to hurt them. Carlisle howled for a second with the effect of it.

'Do me!' Emmett said, looking truly weird in the stretched dress. I did as he asked.

'Anyone else?'

'I'll have a go,' Esme said quietly. I gave her one, right in the stomach and she jumped about five feet in the air. Everyone laughed.

'How about you Jasper,' Alice asked, 'Do you want a go?'

I looked over to him and he smiled, 'I might.'

I changed tactic and aimed my wand at him. He sat very still, much like I had sat in dismay before, and waited. I laughed as he became covered in gold, iridescent bubbles that no matter how much he wafted them away, wouldn't pop.

Finally uncovered from the bubbles, except a few of the smaller ones that sat in his hair, he looked at me deep into my eyes. I flushed at the intimacy of it and quickly looked up to the others, who had the fortune to be looking after the non-popping bubbles.

'How about you, Bella?' I asked, looking round at her. She gazed down at me and asked me whether any of it would hurt her.

I cast a cheering charm on her, which must have been strong in nature, because she didn't stop laughing for two minutes. 'That felt good!' She said in merry spirits, smiling happily.

'It was all wonderful,' Carlisle said. 'Thank you.'

'Not at all... my pleasure.' And I meant it, too. 'You will let me know if there is any side effects, wont you?' I asked. Bella looked wistfully alarmed. 'There wont be any on you,' I chastised, 'I know that for a fact.'

'We'll let you know,' Emmett said, 'We'll remind Bella why she was so upset with you fifteen minutes ago.'

I burst with laughter. 'Do you want to go flying?' Jasper asked, leaning in close to my ear. My eyes were still focused on the other Cullen's and the blush that crept from the seductive tone Jasper used, must have been quite telling to his family.

Who would of heard it anyway...

'Yes, I do.'

Jasper, in all his honey haired glory, looked up to Alice with burning lucidity and said: 'Keep him safe.' However his head was still so close to mine that the words washed over me and caused my conviction of staying neutral on the topic of Jasper to crease and crumble.

He was gone in a flash, leaving behind his invigorating scent and an imprint of his own excitement and longing on me. I sat there in front of the Cullen's feeling like a child.

X

'It's okay, you can go now Alice.' Jasper said as he came into view from the West with my broom in his hand. 'Your mother told me to tell you that she is going away for a couple of days, Draco.'

I tipped my head to him in question. 'She said she was going to see Healer Crane?' I asked.

'That'd be the one.'

'Thank you for waiting with me, Alice.' I said to her as she rose from her place beside me on the ground. I could see as she stood that the back of her skirt was sodden from the ground, and I wasn't sure how I hadn't noticed my own backside getting wet. I threw a drying charm at her, which she barely noticed, and did the same to myself as I stood.

'I'll see you later, Draco.' Alice said. Waving over her shoulder, she said goodbye to Jasper. She got in the Jeep and drove away.

I moved towards Jasper, who held out my broom to me. I took it, straddled the handle and kicked off into the air. The sudden whoosh of air going past me made my belly flop around; the adrenalin kicked off on cue and I leaned forward to lap the open space.

'That thing goes fast,' Jasper called to me from below. His hair looked slightly windswept and I guess he had been lapping with me.

'Hard time keeping up?' I shouted down. The breeze lifted me and dropped me like an ocean ebbs and flows against the shore.

'Yeah, right.' He said, running to the tree nearest me and ascending its trunk with rapidity. Once he was at my level he stopped and watched me hovering for a few seconds. 'I'll race you around the field, if you like?'

I grinned. 'Leaping from tree to tree?' I asked him.

'Sure. Why not?'

I laughed loud and clear into the air. 'On three... one... two...THREE!!!' I shot off around the clearing, leaning so far forward on my broom, my chest lay flat against the handle and for aerodynamics, kicked my feet up against the brush of the broom. Jasper was whooping through the trees and I could see him from the corner of my eye; we were almost neck and neck, one of us occasionally getting the better of the other.

As we made one lap, I swooped into the trees and started zig zagging in and out around him as he jumped from tree to tree at high speed. I flew into the middle of the clearing, pulling loops and feints. I decided to see whether I could scare the life out of him and shot down so fast at the ground with a corkscrew turn.

I heard him yell across the field.

As I pulled up away from the ground he was laughing and encouraging me on, but the sight of him so far below me made me want to be down there with him.

I was out of breath as I settled on the ground. 'That was incredible.' He said to me. 'So much fun.'

'I had a ball!' I cried through heavy breath. The sound I made was hot and fiery.

'You feel phenomenal right now.' Jasper said, coming closer to me and standing but an inch away. 'Come stay at mine, whilst your mother is away.'

I lost myself again for a moment, swaying in my own emotions projected right back at me from the vampire. 'No, I can't.' I said.

'Why not?' He purred. I'm sure he doubled the feeling to influence me, but I pushed it away with gritty effort.

'Because I don't think it's appropriate.' I said. 'Besides, I would rather like some of my own time at the moment.'

Jasper looked affronted. 'I would give you your space.' He scoffed to show his indignation. 'Besides, I didn't mean to come over to stay with me, I meant you to come over so you were not alone.'

'I'll be fine Jasper, seriously. I need to figure out some things.'

'What things?' He questioned, throwing his curiosity onto me.

'Would you stop doing that?'

'I can't help it,' he said, 'it's hard not to let you know what I'm feeling.'

'It confuses me,' I said. 'I have to figure out vampiric relations with the magical world.' I explained.

'Why?'

'Because I don't want to go to jail for doing something I shouldn't be. And if I do happen to practice illegalities, I want to do it under the radar.'

'What's illegal?' He asked me stiffly.

'I don't know yet,' I said, stretching out my arms in front of me, 'but these are the kinds of things you do need to know when dealing with non-wizards.

'And there's things I want to figure out; like why the Volturi apparently have never heard of the wizarding world, and why Carlisle hasn't either. And why we have so many vampires in Britain, but in all the time you Cullen's have been travelling the world you haven't once run into a magical vampire.'

I stood there for a few moments deep in thought. 'You're uncertain about something.'

'Yes, I am.' I said, turning to look at him full in the face. 'I have to go back to England.'

And loathe as I was to admit it, I did have to go back to England because I knew the government there. I had a wealth of information just waiting for me to use at Malfoy Manor and I could easily call upon the Hogwarts library. Hindering in my resolve, however, was the fact that I was going to need somebody's help.

Hermione Granger...

X

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To all the people that reviewed, put me on their author alert list, put this story on their favorite story list or on their story alert list, this chapter is dedicated to you.