I want to take this opportunity to thank all of my fantastic reviewers! Especially the many guest reviewers, whom I can't answer personally! And to the guys that review in French: I'm really excited that you make the effort to read my story and write a review! And by the way: I do speak a bit of French, enough to understand the reviews, anyway, and I love them just as much as the ones in English and German! So, no need to be shy ;)

Because some people asked me for a simular story: Well, I don't really know one like mine, but if you want Hope running around in Hogwarts, check out "Hogwarts Hybrid" by DapperCrapper, or "Harry Potter and the Mikaelson Witch" by Aerlinniel722!

Now, have fun reading and have a nice Halloween!

Chapter 10: A ferocious beast

Hogwarts - Thursday, 31st of October, 1995

Hermione:

"Hermione! Hey, Hermione!" I groaned when Parvati didn't stop shaking my shoulder and slowly opened my eyes.

"Finally! You have to get up if you still want to have breakfast! See you later!" She was already dressed and ready for lessons and left the room as soon as she saw me sitting up in my bed. I rubbed my eyes and threw a glance at the alarm clock sitting on my bedside table. No wonder she was in such a hurry, there were only 20 minutes until the first lesson. I groaned again, considering closing my eyes again for just a few seconds. I had planned the next DA meeting with Harry until late last night and thus had only gotten a few hours of sleep. We had started the meetings after the horrible Hogsmead weekend, when Katie had been attacked. She was still in even now, nearly a month later. After that I had finally decided to ask Elijah to teach us defensive spells in his lessons. I had even offered him that Harry and I read up on spells and show them to the others. Apparently though, the ministry of magic had explicitly banned defensive spells in DADA. And while Elijah had some kind of leverage against Umbridge that made her ignore his treatment of her and the muggle fighting lessons, which she considered harmless, he thought it wouldn't be enough to keep her quiet if she saw a real chance of getting rid of Dumbledore. And that was the last thing we wanted. So instead he helped me and Harry organize the DA and do all of this in secret. But that also meant a lot of extra work outside of school.

I caught myself just in time not to fall asleep again and quickly rose and went into the bathroom, where I splashed a hand full of cold water into my face to try and wake myself up a bit more. Then I started to work on the haystack that was my hair.

When I finally looked presentable, I quickly went down to the great hall to catch a bit of breakfast. I let myself fall on the bench next to Harry and Ron - who were engaged in a heated discussion about quidditch - greeted them grumpily and reached sleepily for the coffee. When I raised my head though, I looked right into the face of a completely unfamiliar guy sitting right across the table. I blinked sheepishly, then eyed him suspiciously. He clearly was none of the Griffindors, but I also couldn't remember ever seeing him in any of the other houses. The fact that he wasn't wearing a school uniform didn't help me with that. He seemed to be a bit older than we were and all the muscles under his grey shirt made him look taller than he probably was. But he had a nice face and kind brown eyes.

"Who the heck are you?" I knew I wasn't very polite, but I was still too tired to bother. Luckily he didn't seem to mind and offered me his hand over the table, smiling.

"Hi. I'm Stefan." I shook his hand but that information didn't really explain anything. I tried to get my sleepy brain to find an explanation for a stranger sitting at the Gryffindor table at breakfast. I blinked a few times but couldn't come up with anything. He seemed to notice and smirked, amused, before pouring coffee and milk into my cup and then putting it into my hand. I grabbed it gratefully and looked around me. The great hall was nearly empty as most students had already left for classes and we were running late. But the few that were still eating threw the occasional sneaky glance at him and whispered. He was drawing attention. At the teachers table Umbridge was throwing murderous glances at Dumbledore, who was talking cheerfully with Elijah, who seemed to ignore him mostly while throwing glances at Stefan and me. Well, if Elijah was still here, at least I didn't have to worry about showing up late for his lesson. I quickly took a few gulps of my coffee and turned my attention back at Stefan while grabbing a bowl of fruit salad.

"And what exactly are you doing here Stefan?" I finally gave up trying to figure it out on my own and he chuckled lightly.

"Are you always like this, or are you nicer once you're fully awake?" He laughed, still more amused than offended by my suspicious questioning. I blushed slightly. I really had to watch what I was saying.

"Actually I'm hiding here. These other girls were bugging me with their questions and I told that I was going to explore the castle and then came back here after I had finally managed to get rid of them. I figured they weren't going to look for me here and I could finish breakfast in peace. But then you showed up. And, I hate to tell you, but the others were a lot nicer. At least they told me their names, before starting an interrogation." He teased me and I started chuckling. I could so imagine Lavender and Parvati running after him, trying to flirt with him.

"I'm sorry. I'm Hermione. And yeah, I guess, I'm always this curious. But I normally try to be more subtle than that." I told him grinning sheepishly, finally waking up a bit while bolting down the fruit salad. A quick glance at the teachers table showed me, that Elijah had apparently managed to get away from Dumbledore and was standing up. I quickly threw an apologetic glance at Stefan.

"Sorry, I have to go now. See you around?" I was still curious what he was doing here and he hadn't answered any of my questions to my satisfaction! I hated situations like that!

He followed my glance, grinning. "No problem. You're in Elijah's first class?" When I nodded, slowly in my confusion, he only started grinning. "Well, have fun then. I'm sure it's going to be interesting today." He winked at me, smirking, but I didn't have much time to ponder about his words. I ripped the boys out of their discussion about quidditch tactics – seriously, how could anyone become so obsessed with a sport? They apparently hadn't even noticed me joining them for breakfast – and together we went to the DADA classroom.

"So did this guy – Stefan – say something to you, what he was doing here? I mean you guys were sitting right opposite from him?"

"Stefan? That's his name? Nah, we didn't really talk to him very much. The girls sat with him and later when he sat with us he didn't seem very interested in talking." Ron explained to me when we had reached the classroom.

"He told us Dumbledore had invited him for the feast this evening, but he didn't want to sit up there with the teachers. I definitely wouldn't either. Maybe he is part of a band Dumbledore has hired for tonight." I thought about that for a moment and came to the conclusion, that this really sounded like the most logical explanation. He did look like some boy from a band too. I sighed and turned my attention to Elijah who had finally entered the room.

"Good morning. Today we will be covering a topic of great importance. I suggest we start with the theoretical background. So, what are you able tell me about vampires?" He started the lesson and my mind instantly went to overdrive. Vampires? He had mentioned doing lessons about them nearly a month ago. I was looking forward to this since then. Especially now that I knew Elijah's sister Rebekah also was a vampire, I was curious about what he would teach us about them. After talking to him about his family, I had read quite a lot of books about vampires, but it made me very angry, because most just treated them as some kind of lower species and seemed very prejudiced. I suspected that wasn't what Elijah would tell us about them. So, what did I know about vampires? When I looked up, I noticed that many of my classmates already had their hands in the air.

"They sleep in coffins and rise at night to drink human blood." - "They are afraid of crucifixes and can't enter churches." - "They hate garlic and can't go into the sun." - "No, they can go into the sun, they just don't do it, because the glittering would attract attention. And they can read thoughts and look into the future!" Finally I couldn't take it any longer, Elijah's expression had turned downright desperate at the last statement. I started laughing.

"What? I read that in a book my cousin gave me! You can look it up!" Lavender hissed at me angrily, which only made me giggle more. I finally got myself back under control and took a deep breath. When I did though, I heard a very, very light chuckling coming from somewhere near Elijah's office door. I looked in that direction, but when I couldn't see anything, I turned my attention back to Elijah. Must have been my imagination.

"The garlic is proven to be a myth. No one really knows how it began, since it really does not make much sense. There is, however, the theory that it was invented by vampires themselves to confuse humans and make them more vulnerable. Just like werewolves spread the myths about silver hurting them." I started and Elijah raised his eyebrows slightly, he seemed to be impressed.

"And vampires most certainly don't glitter in the sun either. They burn to ash if they are exposed to direct sunlight. Thus all the stories about coffins and such. They usually can't read your mind either, but they might be able to manipulate your dreams." I added and Elijah nodded.

"Very good. Thank you. I can see most of you have a very incorrect image of vampires, so let's go through the most important facts together. First of all, a vampire is created if a human dies after drinking vampire blood, which has healing properties. If this happens to a witch he or she will lose all their magic. So you all may want to avoid that." He winked and then continued. "Before we focus on how to defend yourselves against a vampire, I want to point out, that, just like with werewolves, there may be good, as well as evil, vampires. The British ministry of magic sadly does consider them to be a kind of part-human beasts, and it is in fact true that most of them value particularly muggle lives rather little. But for you, as a wizard or witch, a vampire can be a very dangerous opponent, but could also become a valuable alley. You should always keep that in mind, when dealing with them."

"Wait, you're saying that we should consider working with some vampire scum?" Malfoy interrupted him rudely and Elijah looked a bit offended. But then he started smirking.

"Indeed Mr. Malfoy, you will discover that not every vampire is the ferocious, uncivilized beast you're probably imagining right now. In fact I believe that one of your father's most valuable business partners is a highly influential vampire.", Malfoy started at him, his mouth open, as if he had never even heard about that. Of course it made sense that Mr. Malfoy would keep such connections a secret, but if not even his son knew, then how had Elijah found out about that?

"In other parts of the world such collaborations are actually very common. Mostly Vampires and witches or wizards have found ways to live peacefully together. They can greatly benefit from each other. It is only when they start fighting that things tend to become quite ugly."

"But... What use would that be, teaming up with a vampire? There's nothing they can do, that we can't." Elijah threw Seamus an annoyed look.

"That is exactly the attitude that put Voldemort at such an advantage 15 years ago." Most of the class flinched, when he mentioned the name, but he just ignored it and continued.

"He had a very powerful vampire friend that secured him the loyalty of a rather number of vampires. The ministry of magic, as well as Dumbledore, underestimated that effect and that concluded in a lot of unnecessary deaths, until Voldemort died by pure chance. On the other hand, the 'light' side also had connections to another powerful vampire, whom they could have asked for help, but they were too proud to." He paused for a second, giving us time to take it all in.

"Those laws that they claim are protecting you from vampires? They instead do the exact opposite by making nearly every vampire decide to fight for Voldemort, because he promises them more equal rights. I hope that after today's lesson you will think differently about them and would at least consider an alliance should the situation ever arise." Well, I always knew that the ministry was a bunch of prejudiced, racist old wizards who thought themselves superior to every other species. But I hadn't known that it had nearly cost us the war the last time. But who was that powerful vampire Elijah was talking about? Maybe he could help us in this war? Well, Elijah probably was already working on that.

"But of course you would first have to be able to identify one. A skill which you all seem to lack." He smirked and some of my classmates were glaring at him indignantly. What was he talking about? Was he referring to the speculations about Snape?

"Well that shouldn't be that difficult, is it? They can't go into the sun, so they are only running around at night and probably very pale. And they need fangs or something like that. And they are immortal, so I guess their clothing and style of speaking is very old-fashioned. So, I don't know how you could not identify one. It's pretty straightforward, isn't it?" Seamus retorted slightly arrogantly and most of the class nodded in agreement. And he did have a point. Of course some people were joking about Snape, who obviously wasn't a vampire, but I doubted a real vampire would be able to hide very well. From wizards at least. It would be easy enough with muggles who refused to believe in anything supernatural and would find logical excuses for any strange behavior.

"Oh really, is that so? You must have a vast experience at this, considering you were all having breakfast with one." Elijah smirked amused. Wait, what?! I stared at him for a moment and then slapped my head, when it hit me. Of course! How could I have not figured it out sooner.

"Stefan?" I asked him, more for the sake of the others, who were all looking a bit confused. The moment I mentioned the name though, I could see understanding in their eyes and a few drew in a sharp breath.

The door from Elijah's office opened and a laughing Stefan entered.

"This was great, Elijah. Very dramatic." Elijah only shrugged, grinning in amusment.

"So, for everyone who has not had the opportunity to speak to him, this is Stefan, who has so very kindly agreed to help with this lesson." Elijah introduced him.

"Oh. You mean to say I had a choice? You should have told me sooner." Stefan replied dryly and some people chuckled, but I wasn't sure if he really was joking. Elijah threw him a smirk and raised his eyebrows challengingly, but then continued.

"As I was saying, Stefan is a vampire. But there's absolutely no need for you to worry. Stefan now is on what his brother calls a "Bunny diet" once again." Elijah tried to reassure us, but instead I found the 'again' part rather disturbing. The implication behind that was very obvious.

"Yeah, well, as you saw, you were not able to tell that I'm a vampire just by my looks or behavior. But I'm a bit of a special case in that. I've tried to fit in and live as a human for a big part of my live. I'm used to pretending to be human. I can even walk in the sunlight, because of this ring, that a witch made for me." He briefly raised his hand and showed us a big old ring with a blue stone.

"Other vampires probably give you more clues. The most obvious is if you see them using their special abilities." Stefan explained to us and my brain absorbed every information like a sponge.

"What kind of special abilities?" I urged him on curiously and when he noticed, who had asked that, he smirked.

"Well, we're much stronger or faster than you, so if you see someone jumping onto a roof or lifting a car, that would be a very good indication. And we can compel the mind of humans, so that they forget certain things or do whatever we tell them."

"So it basically works like an imperius curse? How do you do it? Is there a way to stop it?" Harry asked Stefan worriedly. The thought that any vampire could control our minds was scary.

"Don't worry, it doesn't work on witches. And even normal humans can protect themselves against it if they wear or drink vervain. It makes compulsion impossible and it also weakens vampires in general and burns us very bad wherever it touches us." Vervain? What was it Prof. Sprout had said? 'In the middle ages, many witches and wizards, but also some muggles drank it regularly, because they thought it would keep evil beings away and it was said to protect people from mind compulsion.' So that was really true! It didn't have anything to do with trying to prevent the imperius or withstand legilimency, they wanted to protect themselves against vampires! Now that greenhouse finally made sense! Dumbledore - or maybe Elijah? - wanted to grow it as a weapon against the vampires, they thought would join Voldemort. That gave me a very uneasy feeling. If they thought it was necessary to grow such an enormous amount of it, the situation had to be much worse than I had ever imagined. I shivered and tried to take my mind of that by listening to what Elijah was saying now.

"If you ever find yourself fighting against a vampire, do keep in mind that if they manage to come close enough, they can easily kill you with their bare hands before you have time to react." Elijah started to explain, but Stefan interrupted him.

"Yeah, but most of us probably won't as many vampires like to play around a bit or will try to drink your blood." Elijah glared at him a bit.

"Thank you, Stefan. If a vampire does underestimate you like that, it might give you enough time to hex them. Nonetheless, the most reasonable tactic would be if you try to keep them at distance. One stunning charm will not do much in stopping a vampire. They rather resemble giants in that matter. So you would either have to synchronize your attacks with other wizards or find a different approach." He explained calmly, and again Stefan spoke.

"You could try to hide in a house for example, a vampire can't enter a house owned by a human without permission. You could also desiccate a vampire with your magic." Now Elijah was quickly interrupting, glaring daggers at him.

"Yes, theoretically you could try this, but it takes quite a lot of energy and is thus not very safe for your own health." He explained calmly and then reached the final part of his explanation, that I knew would come.

"In the end, the only way to permanently dispose of a vampire is to kill him. There are only few things that can do this."

"Well, no one of you is a werewolf, so biting him is not an option for you." Stefan quickly threw in and Elijah looked at him annoyed.

"You also lack the physical strength to separate him from his head or heart with your hands, but maybe if you use the right spell, that could potentially work. By far the easiest way for you is to put a wooden stake through the vampire's heart. You can try to do this with magic, a levitation spell perhaps, or try to do it in a physical fight."

"Yeah, well, it's not that easy." Stefan contradicted him and Elijah threw him a honey sweet smile.

"Exactly and because of that, Stefan here has just volunteered to let you try this and everyone who wants to can have a chance at fighting him now." Stefan threw him a glare at that, and Elijah smirked teasingly.

"What's the matter Stefan? Scared that one of them could be stronger than you?" Elijah winked smirking and Stefan chuckled darkly.

"Not really, I'm just wondering if you really think it's a great idea to train them to become vampire hunters. I mean, what if they... say they suddenly find out someone else is a vampire too and try to kill them instead." Stefan told Elijah in an almost challenging tone and Elijah's eyes got a dangerous glare. Somehow I had the feeling there was some underlying meaning in Stefan's words. Something almost threatening. Did he know about Rebekah? Stefan and Elijah's whole interactions seemed to be based on some kind of power game. I wondered briefly what had caused this tense relationship, but then again, with Elijah a hunter and Stefan a vampire, it seemed only logical that they would have met under less than ideal circumstances.

"Well, I don't want poor Stefan to be afraid, if he doesn't trust in his skills enough to let you fight him with a wooden stake, so you will use this." Elijah added teasingly, while grabbing a stake of metal and Stefan sighed.

"So now, who wants to go first? Don't worry, he won't hurt you. And don't hold back, if you manage to stake him that's his own fault and he will wake up again." Stefan glared at Elijah.

I looked at my classmates but most of them were staring at Elijah as if he had grown a second head. The whole idea of sparring with a vampire did seem to be a bit crazy, but I didn't really want to go first either.

"Sure, I will." Harry stepped forward and Elijah gave him the metal stake and smiled at him encouragingly and then took a few steps back so he and Stefan would have enough room.

The fights were short and showed us exactly how helpless we were against a vampire. Stefan finished everyone in under a minute. Most of the time by managing to grab his opponent's throat and pressing them against the wall, which Elijah counted as us losing, because he could easily break our neck.

Finally it was my turn to fight him and I accepted the stake from Neville. I took a deep breath and went to face Stefan. He just stood there, waiting for me to attack first. He had done so in every fight, letting my classmates attack first. Harry had tried to hit him right with the stake and he had simply grabbed his arm and used his free hand to grab his throat. Ron had tried to sprint at him but using his speed Stefan had managed to get behind him while he stumbled forward and then attacked from behind before Ron could turn back around. Neville had simply thrown the stake like a spear at Stefan, but he had simply caught it midair.

So what was I going to do? How could I beat him? He was much stronger. He was much faster. And I wasn't allowed to use magic in this exercise. I wouldn't be able to beat him with just relying on my fighting skills. I had become quite good at it during Elijah's lessons, but that was always against my classmates, never against a vampire. So if I couldn't beat him with strength or speed I had to beat him with my mind. I had to have a tactic.

I tried to recall everything Elijah had ever taught us about fighting, I had always spent attention to the theoretical advises he gave us, unlike the rest of the class.

So, what was Stefan's fighting style? What were his weaknesses? Elijah had once made us analyze our own weaknesses in an essay and do the same about a fighting partner. I had to use that now. I thought back to what I had already seen of Stefan. He was quick, he never played around, just tried to win in the fastest way possible, he almost seemed bored by this. But at the same time, he was always focused, no one had managed to catch him off guard. And he had patience. He always waited for us to make the first move, which gave him an enormous advantage. I had to make him attack first, but how? Malfoy had already tried to provoke him into that, but in the end gave it up and attacked first too. Hmmm... maybe I should focus on the weaknesses first. The thing with having to be invited in didn't help me here, neither was there a werewolf here to help me. Sunlight maybe. I looked at my surrounding. Two thirds of the room were flooded with light. But Stefan had the ring that made him immune to sunlight. Then there was the thing about vervain. But where would I get some? I doubted Elijah would let me go outside to collect it from the greenhouses. Maybe he had some of it here... They had to do something with the tons of vervain we had harvested and I had never seen it being dried somewhere. So what did Dumbledore do with it? Then I remembered the comment Prof. Sprout had made once. 'We could feed the whole school with it.' Hmmm...

I took a deep breath again and raised my head to look at Stefan again. He chuckled.

"Do you want to start already, or do you need another hour to gather your courage? You don't have to fight me, if you're too scared." He smirked and I could hear some of my classmates chuckling and felt a pang of anger in my stomach. Well, he would stop laughing soon enough. I grinned back at him and raised the stake.

"No, I'm ready." Did I really want to do this? If I was wrong... But then I heard Malfoy laughing and starting to whisper to the other Slytherins. I doubted it was something nice. I felt the anger burn inside me again. I had to risk it. I wanted to win! And Elijah wouldn't let Stefan hurt me if something went wrong. Besides, I knew he had healing potions ready. Slowly I raised the stake, looked into Stefan's eyes, took another breath and then drove the stake into my hand. I heard a gasp from some of the others and gritted my teeth against the pain. I dropped the stake – I didn't want to stake Stefan and needed a free hand more. I quickly threw Elijah a glance, telling him silently that I knew what I was doing and he shouldn't interfere. He stared at me skeptically, but then hesitantly nodded.

I quickly turned my attention back to Stefan who was staring at my hand hungrily and then slowly started to go towards him. The nearer I got, the more shaky his breath were getting and when I only was a few steps away from him he looked at the ground and covered his mouth with his hand.

There was a lot of blood dripping from my hand now and I took another step towards him and finally he raised his head again. I gasped and stumbled back a few steps. His eyes were red now and he had grown long fangs. He took that moment to lunge at me and I gave a tiny screech. Then I remembered my plan and before he could reach me, I pressed my bloody hand against his face. He stumbled back screaming and I could see smoke coming from under my hand. I quickly took a few steps back and brought distance between us again. I didn't want to hurt Stefan too much. He looked back at me again and I could see Elijah smiling proudly. Well if that had already impressed him...

Stefan charged at me again and a shiver ran down my back. His face was full of blood and he looked like something out of a nightmare. I felt a deep fear rise inside of me and quickly tried to push it back. I had to stay focused. After a few steps Stefan yelped in pain and quickly jumped back. Then he threw me an angry glare.

"What's the matter? Looking for something?" I asked him teasingly and held up his ring, completely safe in the middle of the sunlit part of the classroom. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Elijah chuckling, but here sadly was the end of my plan and I turned to look at Elijah.

"That's it. Can we call it a truce? I don't think I can beat him, if I directly attack him and he can't reach me. I would either wait here until help arrives or use magic to try and hit him with the stake." I told Elijah honestly. There was no use in continuing a fight I couldn't win, if I wasn't allowed to do any magic. He chuckled again and watched me amused.

"Of course. The lesson is nearly over anyway. Nonetheless, that was an amazing performance." He told me proudly and quickly dismissed the class, before fetching a healing potion for my hand, which I gladly took. While I was waiting for my hand to heal, Elijah went over to Stefan to offer him a handkerchief and calm him down.

"Wow, Hermione, that was crazy!" Ron told me impressed and I blushed slightly.
"Yeah, I thought you had lost your mind at first. But how were you able to hurt him by touching his face? Honestly, that reminded me a bit of my fight with Quirrel." Harry was looking at me confused, but I wasn't really in the mood to explain the vervain in the food theory yet. Not until I knew why Dumbledore did it.

"That's where I got the idea from. But it's a longer story... let's go okay?" I quickly waved Elijah and Stefan goodbye and left the room, the boys following me.

Only when the boys had left for divination did I notice, that I was still holding Stefan's ring tightly in my right hand. I quickly went back to Elijah's classroom to bring it back. After all, Stefan couldn't leave the room without it.

But just when I wanted to enter the classroom I heard Stefan say a name that instantly caught my attention and made my blood run cold.

"Yeah, well, like I said, Caroline mentioned it in her postcard from Venice. She and Klaus are moving to England. I just thought you should know. Because, if you haven't heard from him yet, I guess that means they're joining Voldemort."