Another head hangs lowly
Child is slowly taken
And the violence, caused such silence
Who are we mistaken?
Zombie, The Cranberries
It was common knowledge amongst anyone who had a subscription to The Daily Prophet that Draco Malfoy was no longer the superior, pureblood wizard he'd once boasted to be. In fact, he hadn't been that wizard in quite some time. Before he was turned into a vampire, Draco had publicly made amends for his actions both before and during the war.
Not everyone had forgiven him. Hermione had certainly taken longer than most.
And yet, there he stood on their front doorstep with Harry's bleeding cousin in his arms. Draco appeared as if he were about to faint — pale, pinched, and dirtied by blood. If his eyes weren't so intense and caught in her own stare, Hermione would have thought he'd pass out within seconds.
"Well?" he hissed at them, causing Harry to step forward out of his trance and grab Dudley by one shoulder. Draco helped to hoist him to his feet, but paused as Harry started to drag Dudley over the threshold.
"What? Come on!" Harry tugged on Dudley as if it would help move Draco forward, but it didn't. Instead, Draco seemed to simply bounce off an invisible force covering the entrance.
"We have to invite him in, Harry," Hermione whispered, her voice rough due to the rawness in the back of her throat. "He can't… he's…"
"A vampire," Draco spat, lips curled down. "It's not a dirty word, Granger. I'm a vampire, and you have to invite me in or else I can't help."
"Right, Draco," Harry said through gritted teeth, as he shouldered a large portion of his cousin's weight, "you're invited into the bloody house. Now move your arse."
The second that they crossed the threshold into their home, Hermione snapped to her senses and swished her wand in a circle in front of her. Draco and Harry were free of his weight due to the levitation charm and Dudley began to float midair. She didn't give them another look — couldn't, but that was besides the point — and levitated Dudley to their makeshift infirmary.
Down the hall from the war room was the medical area, which was bigger inside than one would ever have thought from the outside. Hermione magicked the double doors open and immediately directed Dudley's prone, bleeding body through them to the closest bed. Draco stayed outside, while Harry hovered a step behind her.
She set to work assessing him for wounds. Though his body was well-covered with a turtleneck and jeans — his clothes were intact, though bloodied — she was able to see that his general person seemed to be unharmed. Hermione breathed in slowly and pinched the bridge of her nose as she vanished Dudley's clothes except for his boxers, and looked for anything unusual that could have been covered by his clothes. Down the length of his legs, his feet, his arms. It wasn't until she got to his neck that the problem became quite apparent.
Fang marks.
Her feet carried her away from his bedside before she'd even decided what it was he needed. Blood Replenishing Potion, she decided once she'd got to her apothecary cabinet. Merlin, if they were too late… Hermione grabbed a vial and ran back to Dudley's side. She swatted Harry out of the way.
"If you can't stay out of the way, you'll need to go and wait in the hall with Draco," she hissed as she tipped the contents of the vial down Dudley's throat. "It's bad enough that you're hovering, but he's your family and—"
"He's hardly family," Harry scoffed, though he was still fidgeting with his hands as he watched Dudley swallow the potion. "I'm just worried that my aunt and uncle will have me arrested if they know Dudley's been to see me."
"Yes, well, let's deal with them after we finish saving Dudley's life." She couldn't stop the tetchy tone anymore than she could stop the projectile, bloody vomit that Dudley then spewed all down her front. "Eurgh!"
"What's happening?" Harry scrambled around the bed to Dudley's other side and helped Hermione turn him onto his side. "Hermione, what's wrong with him?"
"You need to get out of here," she ordered him with one finger pointed towards the door. "I can't think with you hovering and shouting in my ear. Just… I'll do what I can and I'll update you as soon as he's stable. Go and find out from Draco what you can."
Harry stared at her for a long moment, released a huff, and stomped out of the infirmary with the door slamming behind him.
Hermione's fingers ran over the wounds on Dudley's neck. Two small, deep puncture marks that dribbled long lines of thick, dark blood onto the white sheets of the bed. She tried to stop the bleeding with magic, but the wounds kept reopening. There was no magical seal on the wounds as one would see with a vampire like Sanguini — a former wizard. Which left one alternative: a muggle vampire had left these marks.
"It's a muggle...," she whispered, a slick of relief coating her insides. If it wasn't a magical vampire, then it meant that it hadn't been Draco that had bitten Dudley. She shouldn't have felt as relieved as she did, but her shoulders still sagged as the worry over one of the night's problems evaporated.
She steeled herself with a fortifying breath and swiped her curls away from her face. "Right, Hermione. Muggle wounds, muggle solutions." Hermione pocketed her wand, ran to the medicine cabinet and tore through various items: gauze, tape, iodine. She wasn't a healer by any means, but she'd picked up a few tricks in her time as a student, and then later as a rogue arm of the law. She could do this. Probably.
Hermione snapped on a pair of latex gloves and got to work.
It was an hour before she finally left the infirmary. When she stepped into the small hallway, Harry and Draco were standing side by side; the former with his fingers twisting his lips in a pinched circle, and the latter watching every step she took toward Harry.
"Hermione?" Harry asked under his breath, all the fear of the evening crashing over his stubbled face and shining back at her unabashedly.
Hermione shook her head. "There's nothing I can do. I'm sorry. He's—"
"Fuck!" Harry turned his body to the side and his fist collided with the wall.
The sudden jolt made Hermione flinch. She rushed to Harry and placed her hands on his face — hard, grounding — and forced him to look into her eyes, even as he struggled against it.
"He's going to be a vampire, and you're going to have to work out how to be okay with that." She held him for so long, their faces inches apart, that she thought her shoulders would give in under the strain.
He breathed through his nose, lifted his hands to hers and gently pried them away from his scratchy face. "He's not going to die?"
"Not in the… traditional sense."
Beside them, watching the entire interaction with his shoulder pressed against the wall, Draco snorted. Hermione lifted her chin and met his stare with her own. Her eyes flitted momentarily over his face; still the same Draco with his pointed features, the strong jawline that could cut glass if given the chance, and Merlin don't even get her started on the mold of his lips that were now curled into a familiar smirk.
She shook her head, pulling herself from his allure. Harry's hand on her shoulder brought her attention back to him, and she smiled in gratitude.
"If I have to tell Petunia and Vernon that their only begotten son is a vampire, it's going to be a bad time." Harry tried to smile, and she loved him for it. "So, please only tell me if you're absolutely sure."
Allowing herself a thick swallow, Hermione ducked her chin. "I'm positive. There's nothing that can be done; the bleeding won't stop and he's chucking up everything I try to give him. I've made him as comfortable as I can, but…"
She drew a breath and really wished that it was only her and Harry standing in the hallway. Her eyes flicked to Draco, then back to Harry, who, somewhat frustratingly, didn't seem to have any idea what she was thinking. Hermione closed her eyes and chewed on her bottom lip.
"What?" Harry urged her with a comforting hand upon her shoulder. His bright green eyes were so earnest, so hopeful, it made her stomach twist.
"She's trying to tell you that he's going to be in an incredible amount of pain," Draco murmured, and she couldn't have been more grateful for it. "He's going to bleed out slowly, and then when he wakes, he'll be so incredibly thirsty that he'll kill anything in his path. It hurts, that — first craving."
Hermione watched the planes of Draco's throat constrict. A vein in the side of his neck pulsed, and he turned his face away from the pair of them and focused on the door of the infirmary. She took the opportunity to really look then, uninhibited by the loss of his stare. He wasn't as pale as she'd thought he'd be. Sure, his complexion was lighter than before he'd been turned, but even the vampires she'd come across in the field were blanched or sallow, and he was neither of those things. His lips were stained a permanent red color, and she tried not to think about the hows and whys; of course he had to feed, but the idea made her nauseous. His body hadn't changed either; still rock solid and lithe under the fabric of his perfectly fit suit.
"To be honest, I don't really mind if he suffers a little," Harry said quietly, as if he wasn't sure he should be saying it at all.
Draco laughed outright. "Harsh, Potter."
Harry shrugged and mussed his hair. "Right, so, where do we keep him?"
"I can help him," Draco said, and his eyes snapped to Hermione. "It was a muggle vampire?"
She startled, and brought his face into focus. "How did you know?"
"Sanguini is more covert with his turns." Draco managed a slight lift of his lips and a shrug of one shoulder. As if it were an afterthought, he added, "And he was wandering around outside Desdemona's compound."
"Desdemona?" Hermione had never heard the name before. She wasn't sure that she wanted to know the details, but she assumed that this was another vampire with their own compound, who was clearly turning muggles into vampires.
She glanced to Harry and wondered if he'd come to the same conclusion.
Harry gestured for them to leave the hallway and led them to the kitchen. Her eyes fell on the kettle and panic washed over her; she'd left it on the entire time they were dealing with the Dudley situation. How had the house not burned to the ground? She rushed over to it and lifted it from the hob; it was cold to the touch.
"I turned it off while you were seeing to Diddykins," Harry explained, and tapped his wand against the kettle, instantly heating it once more. "Would have been poetic that the first time I see him after all these years is also the night my house burns to the ground."
While Hermione shot Harry a withering glance and turned to make a cup of tea, Draco chuckled and pulled out a chair to sit with them at the table. It was an Earl Grey type of evening, no sugar, and a hint of milk. The same concoction she always turned to when her nerves were lit with worry.
She sat down after a few minutes of bustling about and cupped her mug between both hands. "So, this Desdemona. A muggle vampire?"
It was surprisingly hard to look Draco in the eyes. After all these years, and everything they'd been through together, she couldn't quite bring herself to see what his eyes might hold for her. Now that the night had settled, she was slammed by the reminder that she hadn't seen him since just after he turned. Her heart panged.
"She just settled in Nottinghamshire." Draco straightened his arms and rolled up the cuffs of his sleeves to the elbow, revealing long, pale and unblemished skin. "I couldn't get past her guards, so I don't know much about her. Sanguini wants me to get inside her grounds, but it seems she has something against vampires with a magical signature. Her guards could smell me from a mile away."
"Is that how you found Dudley?" Harry asked, as he sat down with a steaming cup of coffee — black, with sugar, never changing. Draco gave a curt nod. "The hell was he doing all the way up in Nottingham? He's never left Little Whinging before."
"That's not true," Hermione interrupted, the tip of her finger clicking against her porcelain mug. "The Order took them north when you left, remember? Maybe he made friends."
Harry snorted and then sipped his coffee. "Who'd want to be friends with him?" His glasses slipped down to the end of his nose and he turned his face towards the big, square window over the sink. "We've attributed the rise in vampire activity to Sanguini. Looks like we were wrong."
"Misinformed," Hermione corrected him, and she finally met Draco's eyes for the second time that night, only to find him watching her too. "What do you know about this Desdemona? Is she old?"
"Relatively new, in terms of mortality," Draco said without dropping his gaze. There were so many layers to his stare and she felt her throat constrict around a tight knot. "Nineteenth century, per Sanguini. Though every vampire is young to him."
"Why isn't Gawain interested in her?" Harry finally drew his eyes away from the window. "Seems like we had a blind spot, and it's meant that my muggle cousin is going to be a bloodsucker—"
"Watch it, Scarhead." Draco's eyes snapped to Harry, and Hermione was relieved to no longer be on the receiving end of his intense gaze. She visibly sagged in her chair. "Robards owes you nothing, remember. You're the one who decided to go vigilante from the Aurors; if you want to be privy to all the Ministry information, you made the wrong choice."
"Hey!" Harry's lips pinched, a notch formed between his eyebrows. "I have very good reasons not to trust the Ministry."
"Yeah, yeah." Draco waved a hand at him. "If I have to hear about any more of your bloody scars, I'll eat you myself." He stood from his chair, a single, fluid movement that surprised Hermione; He'd always had a certain finesse, but the way he moved now was quicker, more elegant even. "Look, I know you're a 'damn the man' type of bloke and have issues with authority, but I'm telling you now that what's happening with the vampires is so far above your head."
Draco paced the long length of their kitchen with his hand to his chin. He'd glance at them every few seconds, reconsider whatever he'd been about to say, and then resume his silent pacing. Harry watched, teetering on annoyance; he had so many tells, and not a very good poker face. Hermione tried to offer him a smile, but barely managed it. Draco was making her just as nervous. All of this business about a muggle vampire, and then Sanguini's sudden increased activity in and around London had made her uneasy. Something was amiss, but she couldn't think of what it might be.
"I'll just go and speak to this Desdemona myself." Harry stood up abruptly and summoned his cloak with a simple flick of his wand.
"That's a spectacularly stupid idea." Draco stopped pacing and rested his back against the edge of the counter. His palms rested flat on the countertop and Hermione watched the way his muscles tensed in his forearms before bringing her eyes to his. "I can help your cousin, Potter. I can get him acclimatized to the life, but you need to keep your nose out of this."
"Like hell!"
"Harry!" Hermione sprung from the table and grabbed his arm. "Draco's… well, he's not right , but you certainly shouldn't go storming into a vampire coven all by yourself with no information."
"I've faced worse than a muggle vampire," he argued, flipping the collar on his cloak over his neck. "What's one vampire and her guards? Nothing, and you know it."
"It's not a single vampire. Her fortress is overrun by them." Draco tutted, dragging their attention from one another to him. "Desdemona just declared war, and you're ready to barge into her home and try to, what, decapitate her with an Expelliarmus?"
"What do you mean 'declared war'?" The term niggled deep in Hermione's bones, an unwelcome feeling that her entire being revolted against. She shoved away her unease, but couldn't help turning her back on Harry in order to give Draco her full attention. Her curls bounced over her shoulder and even though she felt Harry swat them away, Hermione ignored him and focused on Draco.
"Sweet Salazar, has Robards not told you anything of value?" Draco snorted as his head gave a little disbelieving shake. "Sanguini and Desdemona have been slowly accumulating more vampires."
"Of course." The words settled over Hermione, and her entire conversation with their Head Auror liaison suddenly made more sense. All the magical signatures, the translucent red wisps over London and the Scottish Hills. But then, why hadn't he mentioned Desdemona? "Draco, you've been scouting Desdemona on Sanguini's orders? How do you know Robards so well?"
They stared at one another for what felt like forever. Her heart thudded against her sternum, and she ran an absent hand over her throat. It was a motion that drew Draco's attention, and the second she watched his eyes dip to where her fingers pressed into her neck, she abruptly moved her hand to her hip. His eyes darkened, and her blood pounded in her ears.
Lips raised in a smirk, Draco took obvious pleasure in catching her off guard. "I'm Gawain's inside man with the vampires, obviously."
"Bullshit." Harry walked around Hermione and headed for the door with the curse dripping from between his clenched teeth.
"Harry!" Hermione chased after him, aware that Draco was following them, but ignoring him. "Harry, you can't. It's not safe, and it's not smart. And I swear to Morgana herself that if you're turned into a vampire, I will stake you through the heart."
"Hermione, I can't just sit here while Dudley's turning into one of them. What does he even have to do with any of this?" He spun on her, eyes wild with anger as he flicked his gaze to Draco. "Well?"
"You." Hermione said quietly. "She knows this is how to get you involved."
"But why does she want me involved? I'm not a muggle or a vampire. I can't help her." Harry's hand moved to the doorknob and he turned it in his palm.
"It's obvious, isn't it?" Hermione grabbed at his arm and held him in place. She knew he could rip himself away at any moment, but she was not letting him get through that door without a fight. "She obviously knows who you are, Harry."
"But how does she know that?" He deadpanned, and suddenly she saw the rage behind his green eyes and the way they settled on the vampire in the room. "It wouldn't be the first time he's played two sides."
"You're famous," Hermione reminded him with a hand placed to the center of his chest. He vibrated with anger. "She's got to know who you are; even muggle vampires know about wizards, Harry. She knows that you're a muggle-raised wizard; maybe she's trying to gain your sympathy."
"That's a dumb way of going about it. Turning my cousin into a vampire." Harry brought his eyes down to her, and they softened.
"Or, it's genius because it means you'll get involved for your family."
Hermione refused to turn to Draco and his taunting tone. Instead, her eyes pleaded with her best friend: to take his hand off the doorknob, to think things through, to quash the impulse to do something so reckless.
"Not if said family abused me for years." His hand twisted on the door handle, the metal catch grinding on itself.
The hand she didn't have planted on Harry's chest moved to the door and she pressed all her weight into it so that he couldn't fling it open. He startled, eyes widening as she scowled up at him. "It's a message, Harry. We have to work out how to respond to it."
"I know how to respond. I'm going to her compound and I'm going to stab her in the heart with my wand." He yanked on the door and Hermione doubled down to hold it closed. "Hermione," he growled her name, but she refused to back down.
Draco, in all his infinite wisdom , she thought sarcastically, laughed. "Wooden stake, Potter? Pathetic. Hasn't Theo taught you anything about vampires?"
At the mention of Theo's name, Harry stopped struggling against Hermione's hold and his hand fell from the doorknob. She exhaled a long breath and allowed herself to relax. Perhaps it was infinite wisdom, after all.
"Why would he?" Harry asked, tone dejected as he stepped away from the door and rested his back against the nearest chair. "It's not like he's a vampire."
"No. But his best mate is." Draco moved out of their proximity and leaned himself against the wall opposite them.
"Well, that's probably why he didn't tell me." Harry's face split into a small, lopsided smile; the one he always wore when Theo's name came up in conversation. "Wouldn't want me to know how to end your existence."
"Ha ha." Draco intoned as he rolled his eyes. "As if you could…"
As they carried on with their typical, incessant bickering, Hermione grew more and more agitated. It wasn't helping Dudley, or their very real vampire problem that had, in one single night, grown quite impossible to solve. And their wrangling was grating on her nerves; the constant need to one-up each other with wit and insults.
Harry opened his mouth to retort, and Hermione sighed. "Would you two please knock it off! We have a real problem, and your constant squabbling is not going to solve it."
"Well, he—" Harry started, but she silenced him with a look.
Draco didn't help matters when he snorted in response. Hermione shot the same look she'd used on Harry at him, but Draco merely raised his eyebrows in amusement. She rolled her eyes at him. At least that feeling from earlier had disappeared, leaving exasperation with their ancient rivalry in its wake.
"We have to call an Order meeting," Hermione said to Harry, her tone serious, whilst the two men continued to make petulant faces at one another. "We need a plan and everyone needs to be brought up to speed."
Harry withdrew a small, golden coin from his pocket. He tapped it several times with his wand, brought it to his lips and whispered, his eyes on Draco the entire time. Hermione felt the coin in her pocket heat up, and she pulled it out to read Harry's message.
Scrawling, fire-colored text etched itself in the coin's face.
Meeting at HQ. ASAP. Draco Malfoy present.
She glanced at Harry questioningly. He lifted a shoulder and let it drop. "If we don't warn them and they walk through the door and see him, half of them will draw their wands and the other half will tackle him to the ground muggle-style."
He had a point. Hermione nodded in surrender, and then without so much as another word took off towards the meeting area to ensure it was all in order. Most of all, she needed a minute alone. Seeing Draco for the first time in over a year had brought back so many memories, and it wasn't until she was behind a solid oak door that she finally let out the painful, deep breath she'd been holding all night.
