Disclaimer: Calandra & co is mine, most of the rest is J. K. Rowling's. London After Midnight belong to themselves. Thanks to Armelle for the book title suggestion.

Playing With Fire

By Godforsaken

Five feet six inches of black-clad, undead and above all lethal blood-drinking monster lay loosely curled up over three seats on the train, asleep and with her cloak over her face. Looking down, Draco resisted the urge to pat her on the head.

Fortunately, he refrained from any such condescending gestures and thus was allowed to keep his fingers. Slouching a bit more comfortable in the fourth seat, he admitted to himself that it was indeed a beastly hour to start a vacation. He had just turned back to his copy of A Profile of the Dark Arts of the Twentieth Century when a voice rang out, painfully loudly:

"ATTENTION. WE WILL BE ARRIVING AT KING'S CROSS STATION IN TEN MINUTES. THANK YOU."

"You are most emphatically not fucking welcome," Calandra mumbled irritably, sitting up and pulling off her cloak. "Middle of the fucking afternoon..." Blinking, she held the cloak up as a momentary shield against the sunlight.

Draco debated the wisdom of saying... well, anything. He decided against it.

She glared at him. "You didn't wake me up; I won't kill you. Not now, at any rate." She carefully lowered her arm and crossed to her trunk, balanced precariously on the other row of seats.

"I suppose that's a relief." After a pause: "So who are you going to kill in the meantime?" he asked casually.

"Don't ask," she advised, opening the trunk and pulling a black coat out of it. "Ever."

"You're no fun," he complained amicably.

She looked thoughtful as she pulled off her robe, threw it in the trunk along with the cloak, and locked the trunk shut. Then she carefully replied: "I am not entirely sure you would like me when I am fun."

Draco raised an eyebrow. "Is that some sort of challenge?"

Calandra grinned and threw the coat on, then mildly inquired: "Are you planning on reaching King's Cross still in your robes?"

"Hm?—oh." He unceremoniously dumped his robe and book into his own trunk—stationed conveniently right in the middle of the floor—as Calandra fished through her purse. Then:

"Oh, shit."

"What?" she asked, sunglasses halfway to her face.

"I don't have anything besides my cloak," he replied.

"Oh, that's alright. Wear it and we'll pretend we're Goths," she answered, actually putting the sunglasses on this time.

Draco rolled his eyes and obeyed. "Why do I let you give me orders?" he groused.

"At the moment, because you don't have any other options," she replied, and hummed a few bars of London After Midnight. "...Come with me and live forever..."

Except for a few more snatches of October from Calandra, they were silent until the train pulled into the station. Then she quietly stood up, vanished the trunks, and walked out the compartment door.

Draco rolled his eyes and followed as she disembarked, left the station and started walking down the street, apparently oblivious to the freezing wind and the much-hated sunlight.

Being a royally spoilt brat as he was, Draco was a bit put out. "We're walking?"

"You didn't think my parents would pick us up, did you? They're asleep," she pointed out. There's a Portkey at a bookstore nearby we'll be using."

He allowed himself to be shepherded along a few more blocks and into the back of a small secondhand bookstore. Calandra grabbed his wrist—he winced; her hands were freezing—and reached behind a small bookshelf of what appeared to be mostly occult material. Eyes on the ceiling, she pretended to look for something and transported them both home. She mimed putting something in her pocket, but the gesture proved unnecessary.

The gate in front of them was a massive wrought-iron affair set in an 8-foot stone privacy wall, with singularly unwholesome images suggested by the twisted metal. Draco was staring at it with something akin to admiration.

Calandra muttered something in what sounded like German, and the gate creaked open.

"Very dramatic," Draco whispered as they stepped through.

Calandra grinned. "I have a bit of an affinity for dramatic crap like that. You should see it when it isn't 3 o'clock in the afternoon." They'd reached the door, another heavy ominous bit of décor, ancient dark wood with iron fittings that also creaked when they opened it. "And speaking of it being 3 o'clock in the afternoon, we're going to bed now."

Draco followed her up a dramatically sweeping staircase and through a maze of corridors, until she turned into a short hallway and slowed down. They passed one door on the left; there appeared to be no other doorways in the hall.

Calandra looked at the blank wall at the far end of the corridor, then the blank wall between the other door and the end.

She pointed at it. "There's supposed to be a doorway there," she said quietly, then retraced her steps back to the existing door.

"This is my room," she told him, opening the door. "A room for you was evidently not prepared, despite my instructions, therefore you will stay here tonight and I'll... probably bunk with my sister."

Crossing the black-and-red room, Calandra closed the blackout curtains, thus plunging the room into near-darkness.

Draco felt uneasy, being an antisocial creature of habit and thus not used to occupying other people's "space." He sighed as his eyes adjusted enough to let him see the outline of the four-poster bed. "Alright."

"Your trunk's at the foot of the bed. I think... yeah. Um... don't poke around too much, please, and I'll see you in the evening. Goodnight." She headed back towards the door.

"Goodnight."

The door closed.

Draco sat on the bed and started taking off his boots.

Calandra took a deep breath, for purely psychological reasons, and threw back the lid of her fledgling's coffin.

"Mariseta, Mariseta, it's me," she declared as the vampire inside gave its natural reaction—grabbing her by the throat in a tight enough stranglehold to turn a mortal's vertebrae to powder. "It's me, you twit, Calandra..."

Mariseta let go as she woke up. "Oh, it's you."

"It'd be anyone else?" Calandra demanded, rubbing her neck. "My coffin's under my four-poster and my four-poster is occupied by a human because a room for him wasn't prepared, so I have to bunk with you for the remainder of the night."

"A room was prepared," Mariseta replied indignantly. "Did most of it myself."

"If it doesn't have a door, it is not 'prepared' sufficiently for a human, wizard or no," Calandra snapped. "I'll fix it tomorrow; right now I want to sleep."

Mariseta moved over and beckoned Calandra to climb in. "Ah, you poor stressed-out nutcase," she said sympathetically.

"I love you too," Calandra growled, settling into the coffin.

Mariseta kissed her as the lid clicked shut.