Disclaimer: Not mine!
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(A/N: This chapter is especially dedicated to those of you who made me feel so incredibly happy just by taking the time to sit down and write me all those e - mails with your comments and opinions - I love to hear from you guys!!! Thanks for putting up with my sporadic updates - I really hope to have plenty of time soon to catch up on things! Thanks again, so much, and I hope you like this one! ~Lee ^-^)
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7. A Fiendish Persuasion
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"Did I solicit thee From darkness to promote me?" -Milton, Paradise Lost
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Ginny sat in her bed, against her pillows, staring at Draco Malfoy in a stupor. He looked back at her with an arrogant, bored expression.
As far as she was concerned, she had gone mad, starkers, completely nutters. Draco was the vampire. He was sitting next to her bed, and hadn't said a word once in the last hours since she'd regained consciousness.
When she'd first opened her, eyes, she'd become aware of a cold, gnawing, tearing hunger inside that had been so strong and fiercely insistent, she'd been afraid.
Everything her panicked, wild gaze took in, from the tall, night darkened windows, to the expressions of the pitying, moving portraits on the walls, had looked familiar, yet dreadfully different. Even the shadows had seemed to be crawling. And then all she'd been able to think about was easing the agonizing twisting in her body, and the burning, piercing pain in her canines.
She'd caught sight of Harry, and her brother - they'd looked at her wide - eyed, stepping back reflexively, and she'd actually been able to smell their fear. The scent had driven her nearly insane with the need to bite, the need to attack.
Terrified by her reaction, she'd tried to move from the bed that suddenly seemed so confining, tried to run away, only to be caught by a pair of strong hands. She'd fought, gnashing her suddenly too sharp teeth, blinking through a frightening veil of red, a small part of herself untouched by the chaos looking on, aghast at her behavior.
She remembered realizing that the one who held her was Draco. She'd frozen, caught in the calmness emanating from his unnervingly pale eyes, and she hadn't fought when he'd offered up his wrist, the pale skin already welling with blood from a small cut.
Ginny refused to even think about what she'd done next.
After that, everything had quieted. The rage of emotions, the bestial urges, the haze of red - they hadn't disappeared, but they'd decreased to a controllable level. The feeling of utter coldness dissipated, until she was left with the sort of feeling left after shaking awake a limb that had fallen asleep.
She'd been back in her bed, before she'd even realized it, with Draco stepping back into the shadows of the room as if he'd originally come from them. Her wide eyes had locked with his and then with the two pairs of shocked eyes staring at her from nearby. Madam Pomfrey had then appeared, and after her, her mother had been there, sobbing, wrapping her arms around her.
Rather than being comforted, Ginny had nearly panicked when she'd felt the beat of her mother's heart, and heard what she knew to be the woman's blood rushing through her veins.
Pomfrey had lit several lamps, and Ginny had found herself flinching in pain, turning away from the sudden warm glow.
From the snippets of conversation she caught in the hectic minutes after, she was supposed to have been lying there dead.
Ginny had seen Percy and Charlie, Fred and George, Ron and Bill, all in the same place for the first time in several years, but her happiness at seeming her family together was tempered by her fear.
She'd been thankful when Madam Pomfrey had at last insisted that everyone leave so she could rest - the things she had heard and seen were more than slightly unsettling. Her family had left grudgingly, but still no one had seemed to notice Draco still standing in the darkness, just outside of the ring of light cast by the lamps, watching her.
He'd returned silently to her bedside, an expert flick of his wand snuffing the light, and there he'd stayed, quiet and aloof.
Ginny couldn't bring herself to speak - but everything was so still she almost wished Draco would speak.
Though she was afraid of what he might have to say.
What was really haunting her though, was the fear that had been in Ron and Harry's eyes when they'd looked at her - the fact that they were frightened of her had served only to scare her even more.
She looked over at Draco again, and at last realized he why he was there.
He wasn't watching over her, he was there to watch her. He was probably there to keep her from hurting anyone, which Ginny found oddly ironic.
Well, she remembered well what had happened, and what he was - and she could only assume he'd made her what he was - a vampire.
"Why did you let Harry and Ron stay here?" She suddenly asked, her voice sounding unrecognizable to her own ears.
Draco arched a brow, eyeing her with feigned interest. "What do you mean?"
Her skin tingled with awareness at the silky sound of his voice. It sounded different, had a richness to it that she hadn't been aware of before.
Ginny cleared her throat. "You let them stay, and you knew how I was going to be when I woke up. You knew, and they were scared of me."
He shrugged, a slight smirk curling his lips. "It was rather amusing, wasn't it?"
Ginny stared at him, her fear suddenly clawing at her. The darkness of the room seemed to be closing in around her, making it seem airless.
"I know what you're thinking. 'Why couldn't he have been a werewolf?'"
"You're barmy!" She whispered, fisting her hands in her blankets. "Don't you have any idea what you've done to me? You've ruined my life! You killed me!"
"You know, you never struck me as being the type of girl to be prone to hysterics. Don't be so bloody dramatic, Weasley." Draco stood from his seat and slowly prowled in the darkness at he end of her bed, his strange silvery gaze glittering at her.
"I didn't kill you. In point of fact, if you want to get downright technical, I actually saved you."
Ginny laughed unsteadily in disbelief, and started to slide unsteadily from her bed. "Vampire's are undead - everyone knows that."
"You aren't a vampire. You aren't one of the undead. Not yet, anyway. Neither am I, for all that."
She felt her toes touch the floor, and for once didn't flinch at the coldness of the ancient stone beneath her bare feet.
Draco took a deceptively leisurely step towards her, and she instinctively lashed out, snapping at him with her teeth, warning him to keep his distance.
His eyes flashed, suddenly vitriolic in his pale, expressionless face.
A growl escaped her throat, and then Ginny violently shook her head in denial, pressing her back against the wall. "This can't be happening. I'm having a nightmare - "
"Are you going to cry now? Let me know if you are - I'll step out. I find tears especially tiresome. The weeping and wailing always hurts my ears," drawled Draco dispassionately in his deep, velvety, upper crust accent, crossing his arms over his chest.
The swish of his robes, the sounds of folds of fabric brushing against each other, whisper soft, rasped along her nerves, making her ears ache. She threw her hands up over her them, trying to blot out the suddenly deafening noise, but it only got worse.
That familiar pounding rose again, and she realized it was her heart, beating too loud. It was joined by another, this one stronger, keeping beat with hers.
Ginny pressed her palms to her ears, her breath coming more rapidly as she heard the sounds of her mother weeping in rooms outside of the Infirmary doors, and then the slightly more distant , familiar noises of students chattering in the Great Hall. The perfectly normal sounds of clattering utensils scraped along her nerves. Great, eerie screeches from the Owlery made her clench her teeth. She felt the slight shifting of the moving staircases, heard the grinding of the stone, and from far, far below, the steady drip of water, the strong odor of sulfur and the high-pitched squeaking of rats.
For a moment it wall all too much, a sensory overload - and then -
Draco spoke, his voice coolly impassive.
"Look at me."
Ginny tried to resist, but she found herself looking up at him in an instant, at his emotionless face and hard metallic eyes.
Slowly the cacophony stopped, and Ginny finally regained control of her senses. Finally, all she heard was her own labored breathing.
Draco was watching her closely, his fair head cocked slightly to one side. "I'd almost forgotten about that. How overwhelming those first few hours were," he commented softly.
Ginny swallowed, and winced as she inadvertently pricked her tongue with her teeth. She began moving, keeping her back to the wall, feeling her way across the tapestry covered stone with a weakly scrabbling hand.
He smirked, a fire lighting in his eyes. "Where do you think you're going, Gin?"
She took a deep breath, and came to an abrupt halt. "Don't call me that."
"What? Gin? Why?" He asked, sounding amused.
"You don't know me."
"I do - I know more about you than you think." Draco shifted his stance, and took several slow, deliberate steps her way, making her hard pressed not to cringe back against the wall.
"I know, for instance, that you think you're going to get out of here in the next few moments."
Ginny looked at him, her eyes wide. "Let me go."
Draco snorted, and gave his head a slight shake, his eyes never leaving hers. "You sound as if I'm holding you against your will."
"A - aren't you?" Ginny used this opportunity to inch farther along the wall, towards the door.
"Hell no. If you want to go out there and scream to the whole bloody world that you think you're a vampire, by all means, I won't stop you, as long as you keep your mouth shut about me." Draco stopped perhaps a foot away from her, and paused. "I don't think you'll want to go out there just yet, though, when I tell you what will happen if you do."
He didn't have to tell her. Ginny well knew what happened to vampires once they were caught.
"B - but you said I wasn't one!"
"I said you weren't one 'yet'." Draco's expression suddenly turned fierce, and he moved his arms up on either side of her to pin her against the wall. "You weren't listening in class either, were you, Weasley? You must make a kill in order to turn completely. Understand? I 'saved' you because if you had died, 'I' would have turned. It's that simple. There is a slim possibility that we may be able to find a cure, but it will take time, and while I do usually have some control over my baser instincts, I've no doubt that I could liken the extent of yours to a newborn Kneazle's ability to control it's bladder," he said with brutal honesty.
"I could really care less about what becomes of you, and if you want to go gadding about, biting half the Wizarding community on the ass, feel free to do so, but do you honestly think any of them out there are going to listen to you once you tell them what happened to you? There is no known cure. You'll be imprisoned, and that coward Fudge will have you destroyed, even before your dear, sweet Mum can shed a tear."
Trembling in reaction to his nearness, and his harsh words, Ginny slid down the wall and put her head on her knees, silently sobbing.
"Now," he murmured above her, "tell me you really want to go out there right now."
"I hate you," Ginny whispered, wrapping her arms around her knees.
A rustling movement above her told her he'd moved away. "Tell me something I haven't heard."
"How can you be so cruel? Why can't you even pretend to care? You might as well be one of them!" Ginny sniffed angrily, raising her head to look at him, knowing her words were wrong, but needing to hurt him back.
His back was turned, as he stared out one of the dark windows, his hair gilded with dull silver light from the half-hidden moon outside.
His voice was very quiet when he spoke. "I've been dealing with this for seven years. I'll warn you once. You may want to watch what you say to me."
Ginny stood up, furious, suddenly. "Stop trying to scare me! That's what you want, isn't it? You want me to be scared! You like knowing I'm afraid of you, don't you? You like scaring people."
Draco turned back to her, smiling in a disturbingly charming way. "What's not to like? It's something I'm good at very good at, you know."
Ashamed of herself, Ginny slumped tiredly against her bed, exhausted. "I - I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. Noone deserves what you've gone through."
His false smile became chilling in an instant. "I have the feeling you're going to push me a bit too far one night."
Her heart leapt into her throat as he stepped toward her. Her apology had seemed to anger him more than her insults.
The doors to the Infirmary opened, casting gold torchlight briefly into the room before they closed.
Harry and Ron appeared from thin air, and Ginny nearly collapsed in relief.
Draco gave her a last glance, and walked away toward the doors.
"I'll be back - I have some business to attend to."
"You mean you have to go rip some poor bloke's throat out," Ron muttered bravely.
Draco paused, looked back at Ginny, and then he smirked in a conspiratory manner at Harry.
"Be careful, Potter - she has teeth, and she knows how to bite - in more ways than one."
~***~
TBC
~***~
"When death is always near, it should matter more to you the kind of life you lead."
~***~
~***~
(A/N: This chapter is especially dedicated to those of you who made me feel so incredibly happy just by taking the time to sit down and write me all those e - mails with your comments and opinions - I love to hear from you guys!!! Thanks for putting up with my sporadic updates - I really hope to have plenty of time soon to catch up on things! Thanks again, so much, and I hope you like this one! ~Lee ^-^)
~***~
7. A Fiendish Persuasion
~***~
"Did I solicit thee From darkness to promote me?" -Milton, Paradise Lost
~***~
Ginny sat in her bed, against her pillows, staring at Draco Malfoy in a stupor. He looked back at her with an arrogant, bored expression.
As far as she was concerned, she had gone mad, starkers, completely nutters. Draco was the vampire. He was sitting next to her bed, and hadn't said a word once in the last hours since she'd regained consciousness.
When she'd first opened her, eyes, she'd become aware of a cold, gnawing, tearing hunger inside that had been so strong and fiercely insistent, she'd been afraid.
Everything her panicked, wild gaze took in, from the tall, night darkened windows, to the expressions of the pitying, moving portraits on the walls, had looked familiar, yet dreadfully different. Even the shadows had seemed to be crawling. And then all she'd been able to think about was easing the agonizing twisting in her body, and the burning, piercing pain in her canines.
She'd caught sight of Harry, and her brother - they'd looked at her wide - eyed, stepping back reflexively, and she'd actually been able to smell their fear. The scent had driven her nearly insane with the need to bite, the need to attack.
Terrified by her reaction, she'd tried to move from the bed that suddenly seemed so confining, tried to run away, only to be caught by a pair of strong hands. She'd fought, gnashing her suddenly too sharp teeth, blinking through a frightening veil of red, a small part of herself untouched by the chaos looking on, aghast at her behavior.
She remembered realizing that the one who held her was Draco. She'd frozen, caught in the calmness emanating from his unnervingly pale eyes, and she hadn't fought when he'd offered up his wrist, the pale skin already welling with blood from a small cut.
Ginny refused to even think about what she'd done next.
After that, everything had quieted. The rage of emotions, the bestial urges, the haze of red - they hadn't disappeared, but they'd decreased to a controllable level. The feeling of utter coldness dissipated, until she was left with the sort of feeling left after shaking awake a limb that had fallen asleep.
She'd been back in her bed, before she'd even realized it, with Draco stepping back into the shadows of the room as if he'd originally come from them. Her wide eyes had locked with his and then with the two pairs of shocked eyes staring at her from nearby. Madam Pomfrey had then appeared, and after her, her mother had been there, sobbing, wrapping her arms around her.
Rather than being comforted, Ginny had nearly panicked when she'd felt the beat of her mother's heart, and heard what she knew to be the woman's blood rushing through her veins.
Pomfrey had lit several lamps, and Ginny had found herself flinching in pain, turning away from the sudden warm glow.
From the snippets of conversation she caught in the hectic minutes after, she was supposed to have been lying there dead.
Ginny had seen Percy and Charlie, Fred and George, Ron and Bill, all in the same place for the first time in several years, but her happiness at seeming her family together was tempered by her fear.
She'd been thankful when Madam Pomfrey had at last insisted that everyone leave so she could rest - the things she had heard and seen were more than slightly unsettling. Her family had left grudgingly, but still no one had seemed to notice Draco still standing in the darkness, just outside of the ring of light cast by the lamps, watching her.
He'd returned silently to her bedside, an expert flick of his wand snuffing the light, and there he'd stayed, quiet and aloof.
Ginny couldn't bring herself to speak - but everything was so still she almost wished Draco would speak.
Though she was afraid of what he might have to say.
What was really haunting her though, was the fear that had been in Ron and Harry's eyes when they'd looked at her - the fact that they were frightened of her had served only to scare her even more.
She looked over at Draco again, and at last realized he why he was there.
He wasn't watching over her, he was there to watch her. He was probably there to keep her from hurting anyone, which Ginny found oddly ironic.
Well, she remembered well what had happened, and what he was - and she could only assume he'd made her what he was - a vampire.
"Why did you let Harry and Ron stay here?" She suddenly asked, her voice sounding unrecognizable to her own ears.
Draco arched a brow, eyeing her with feigned interest. "What do you mean?"
Her skin tingled with awareness at the silky sound of his voice. It sounded different, had a richness to it that she hadn't been aware of before.
Ginny cleared her throat. "You let them stay, and you knew how I was going to be when I woke up. You knew, and they were scared of me."
He shrugged, a slight smirk curling his lips. "It was rather amusing, wasn't it?"
Ginny stared at him, her fear suddenly clawing at her. The darkness of the room seemed to be closing in around her, making it seem airless.
"I know what you're thinking. 'Why couldn't he have been a werewolf?'"
"You're barmy!" She whispered, fisting her hands in her blankets. "Don't you have any idea what you've done to me? You've ruined my life! You killed me!"
"You know, you never struck me as being the type of girl to be prone to hysterics. Don't be so bloody dramatic, Weasley." Draco stood from his seat and slowly prowled in the darkness at he end of her bed, his strange silvery gaze glittering at her.
"I didn't kill you. In point of fact, if you want to get downright technical, I actually saved you."
Ginny laughed unsteadily in disbelief, and started to slide unsteadily from her bed. "Vampire's are undead - everyone knows that."
"You aren't a vampire. You aren't one of the undead. Not yet, anyway. Neither am I, for all that."
She felt her toes touch the floor, and for once didn't flinch at the coldness of the ancient stone beneath her bare feet.
Draco took a deceptively leisurely step towards her, and she instinctively lashed out, snapping at him with her teeth, warning him to keep his distance.
His eyes flashed, suddenly vitriolic in his pale, expressionless face.
A growl escaped her throat, and then Ginny violently shook her head in denial, pressing her back against the wall. "This can't be happening. I'm having a nightmare - "
"Are you going to cry now? Let me know if you are - I'll step out. I find tears especially tiresome. The weeping and wailing always hurts my ears," drawled Draco dispassionately in his deep, velvety, upper crust accent, crossing his arms over his chest.
The swish of his robes, the sounds of folds of fabric brushing against each other, whisper soft, rasped along her nerves, making her ears ache. She threw her hands up over her them, trying to blot out the suddenly deafening noise, but it only got worse.
That familiar pounding rose again, and she realized it was her heart, beating too loud. It was joined by another, this one stronger, keeping beat with hers.
Ginny pressed her palms to her ears, her breath coming more rapidly as she heard the sounds of her mother weeping in rooms outside of the Infirmary doors, and then the slightly more distant , familiar noises of students chattering in the Great Hall. The perfectly normal sounds of clattering utensils scraped along her nerves. Great, eerie screeches from the Owlery made her clench her teeth. She felt the slight shifting of the moving staircases, heard the grinding of the stone, and from far, far below, the steady drip of water, the strong odor of sulfur and the high-pitched squeaking of rats.
For a moment it wall all too much, a sensory overload - and then -
Draco spoke, his voice coolly impassive.
"Look at me."
Ginny tried to resist, but she found herself looking up at him in an instant, at his emotionless face and hard metallic eyes.
Slowly the cacophony stopped, and Ginny finally regained control of her senses. Finally, all she heard was her own labored breathing.
Draco was watching her closely, his fair head cocked slightly to one side. "I'd almost forgotten about that. How overwhelming those first few hours were," he commented softly.
Ginny swallowed, and winced as she inadvertently pricked her tongue with her teeth. She began moving, keeping her back to the wall, feeling her way across the tapestry covered stone with a weakly scrabbling hand.
He smirked, a fire lighting in his eyes. "Where do you think you're going, Gin?"
She took a deep breath, and came to an abrupt halt. "Don't call me that."
"What? Gin? Why?" He asked, sounding amused.
"You don't know me."
"I do - I know more about you than you think." Draco shifted his stance, and took several slow, deliberate steps her way, making her hard pressed not to cringe back against the wall.
"I know, for instance, that you think you're going to get out of here in the next few moments."
Ginny looked at him, her eyes wide. "Let me go."
Draco snorted, and gave his head a slight shake, his eyes never leaving hers. "You sound as if I'm holding you against your will."
"A - aren't you?" Ginny used this opportunity to inch farther along the wall, towards the door.
"Hell no. If you want to go out there and scream to the whole bloody world that you think you're a vampire, by all means, I won't stop you, as long as you keep your mouth shut about me." Draco stopped perhaps a foot away from her, and paused. "I don't think you'll want to go out there just yet, though, when I tell you what will happen if you do."
He didn't have to tell her. Ginny well knew what happened to vampires once they were caught.
"B - but you said I wasn't one!"
"I said you weren't one 'yet'." Draco's expression suddenly turned fierce, and he moved his arms up on either side of her to pin her against the wall. "You weren't listening in class either, were you, Weasley? You must make a kill in order to turn completely. Understand? I 'saved' you because if you had died, 'I' would have turned. It's that simple. There is a slim possibility that we may be able to find a cure, but it will take time, and while I do usually have some control over my baser instincts, I've no doubt that I could liken the extent of yours to a newborn Kneazle's ability to control it's bladder," he said with brutal honesty.
"I could really care less about what becomes of you, and if you want to go gadding about, biting half the Wizarding community on the ass, feel free to do so, but do you honestly think any of them out there are going to listen to you once you tell them what happened to you? There is no known cure. You'll be imprisoned, and that coward Fudge will have you destroyed, even before your dear, sweet Mum can shed a tear."
Trembling in reaction to his nearness, and his harsh words, Ginny slid down the wall and put her head on her knees, silently sobbing.
"Now," he murmured above her, "tell me you really want to go out there right now."
"I hate you," Ginny whispered, wrapping her arms around her knees.
A rustling movement above her told her he'd moved away. "Tell me something I haven't heard."
"How can you be so cruel? Why can't you even pretend to care? You might as well be one of them!" Ginny sniffed angrily, raising her head to look at him, knowing her words were wrong, but needing to hurt him back.
His back was turned, as he stared out one of the dark windows, his hair gilded with dull silver light from the half-hidden moon outside.
His voice was very quiet when he spoke. "I've been dealing with this for seven years. I'll warn you once. You may want to watch what you say to me."
Ginny stood up, furious, suddenly. "Stop trying to scare me! That's what you want, isn't it? You want me to be scared! You like knowing I'm afraid of you, don't you? You like scaring people."
Draco turned back to her, smiling in a disturbingly charming way. "What's not to like? It's something I'm good at very good at, you know."
Ashamed of herself, Ginny slumped tiredly against her bed, exhausted. "I - I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. Noone deserves what you've gone through."
His false smile became chilling in an instant. "I have the feeling you're going to push me a bit too far one night."
Her heart leapt into her throat as he stepped toward her. Her apology had seemed to anger him more than her insults.
The doors to the Infirmary opened, casting gold torchlight briefly into the room before they closed.
Harry and Ron appeared from thin air, and Ginny nearly collapsed in relief.
Draco gave her a last glance, and walked away toward the doors.
"I'll be back - I have some business to attend to."
"You mean you have to go rip some poor bloke's throat out," Ron muttered bravely.
Draco paused, looked back at Ginny, and then he smirked in a conspiratory manner at Harry.
"Be careful, Potter - she has teeth, and she knows how to bite - in more ways than one."
~***~
TBC
~***~
"When death is always near, it should matter more to you the kind of life you lead."
~***~