A/N: *wince*

Alright…it's been more than two months. Now I know what those authors are talking about when they say that work and school are taking over their lives. I am so sorry. My piano exam has drained more out of my time and energy than I ever imagined, all on top of homework.

This chapter has also been delayed due to a painful plot hole. When it was finished, doubtful responses from my betas (Hell's Hauntress and Hyde) didn't exactly add to my enthusiasm. I do promise a longer chapter next time, which will in about two-four weeks.

And thank you forevermore for the reviews!

~Tabby

Chapter Ten

The pinpricks were burning. It wasn't painful. Rather, it was painfully pleasurable. And Malfoy had her wrists held in his hands. He was looking up, those translucent gray eyes, but his mouth was still pressed to her arm –

Hermione woke up.

The sky on the ceiling above her was the deep, passionate blue of right-at-sunset.

She sat up. She was back in the Library of Madeleine. 

Malfoy. She thought she had killed him. Along with all those others she had killed. But – he was alive.

 "Where on earth did you go last night?" asked Elizabeth I curtly.

Hermione's thoughts were so scrambled and excited that she didn't hear the queen talking. She was fascinated – if he wasn't dead, then what about the others? She wanted to talk to him! Badly. She wanted to find her old rival…whatever and wherever he was…

Hermione's eyes darted to the place where her wrists were bitten.

Two tiny white dents flecked each one.

Draco, Draco, Malfoy, Malfoy. This had struck a flint, a new spark of adventurous daring had lit, and it danced inside her. He was a mysterious new lead…frightening; but fascinating. Whether she really wanted catch him for the sake of fulfilling her duty as an Auror, or some other reason, she did not really care. Thoughts of Torch were shoved hastily aside for the moment.

Hermione turned to look at the famous art figurines.

Leave your worries here tonight, spoke Nefertiti. Go find him.

I will, Hermione promised.

The Death Eaters she had stripped of all traces of magical belongings and called the police to deal with the bodies…it wasn't her concern anymore…

Nightfall. She would find him.

Hermione jumped up and run for the Library's magical exit.

"And just where do you think you're going?" sniped Elizabeth crossly, but the strange and feisty young witch was already gone.

~

Draco's eyes were closed. His fledgling fangs pressed against his tongue almost to the point that they bled – a nervous, human tendency.

Nightfall.

He had fed; a young teenage male's corpse lay cold and stiff behind him in the shadows.

The new blood now seeping through his body was uneasy.

But at least he wasn't thirsty anymore. 

And he could see Hermione. Standing outside the Madeleine, where tape had been laid to mark a scene of crime, he waited in the open. She was going somewhere…important. He could see the bright look of calculation in her eyes.

Just then, he had an urge to throw his head back and laugh giddily. What a mad game he had started. Mad? Or was it brilliant? She was looking for him.

All he had to do now was wait.

~

The blond haired figure stood in the square in front of the church. An odd spotlight shone on him.

Hermione took a step forwards from the steps and towards him.

He had on a long gray jacket. But, his stature was unmistakable. And that hair.

His back was turned. Hermione was close enough to reach out and touch him. Just as she was about to tap him on the shoulder –

She blinked.

He was gone.

Hermione's eyes sprinted around the landscape. How did he…?

And then something caught her eye. Twelve or so feet away, a body lay hardly noticeable by a gutter.

Edging nearer, she felt her stomach tighten. There, lay neatly a young muggle body, open-eyed, frozen, with mouth gaping. The skin was bluish with pale, and completely, one hundred percent dead.

Hermione's head spun.

What… is he?

No later then she lifted her eyes from the corpse did she spot him. Thirty feet away, down the street, calmly standing next to the passing muggle cars.

He flashed a startling grin and disappeared again.

Oh god. It's the Cheshire vampire game.

~

Half an hour later, Hermione was frantically trying to make sense of what she was doing.

Every time she saw him, he disappeared and reappeared a distance away. She was Apparating in front of dozens of muggles every minute.

This is insane!

Hermione's lungs fought for breath. He was seriously making fun of her, and she didn't like it. He knew she would have to go after him, and was making use of this power.

That son of a bitch!

Hermione gritted her teeth.

This has got to be a trap!

The muggles around them were getting confused and scared. Forget anti-muggle security. Hermione concentrated once more on the spot from where Malfoy was quietly smiling at her.

The Eiffel Tower was in view. Stop. Apparate. Stop. Apparate.

He stood, now, at the base of the enormous steel skeleton that loomed above them against the Paris sky. He was in the crowd, with that strange glow around his body.

Blink.

He was gone. Hermione couldn't see him anywhere in the landscape.

And she knew that he would be at the very top of the tower.

I'll be goddamned for this, Hermione cursed. But she lifted her wand –

~

A shriek.

Draco turned to see a middle-aged muggle tourist stumble and fall back on the railing.

"I'm so sorry! Pardon! Pardon!" cried the young brown-haired woman who had crashed into her.

But the woman wasn't about to be satisfied with an apology. She was in hysterics, because the younger woman didn't just crash into her; she had appeared out of nowhere and knocked her to the ground.

Draco laughed out loud.

The tourist standing next to him gave him a funny look and edged away.

"Hey," he cried softly, to the young woman, who was now blurting contrived explanations to the one she had crashed into.

She immediately caught on and looked at him.

"Malfoy."

"Bonsoir, Hermione."

~

Hermione's throat went dry.

Draco Malfoy, the Death Eater/vampire stood there, leaning against the railing in the harsh cold that was amplified so high up in the city. His blond hair floated idly in the wind. His skin was ever penetratingly bright in the navy-colored night; unabashed by the golden lights of Paris.

Hermione wondered why it was so weird, that he stood out in the crowd of ordinary people like an ore in the coal. 

But she summoned her courage.

"Bonsoir, Hermione." He said quietly.

Something caught in her throat at the sound of his voice; it was scary.

Stop this, dammit! It's just Malfoy!

"Shut up, Malfoy." she countered uneasily. "Why the hell did you drag me all the way around the city to bring me here for?"

"You didn't have to follow me."

"Well –"

Great.

"Well – god damn you! You know very well I'm not playing around! So don't – do this!"

He smiled again.

Hermione's wand was out in half a second.

"Don't, Malfoy!" she screamed. "If you disappear on me again I'll kill you!"

He disappeared.

Hermione felt panic prickling on her back more than the anger. She wasn't half as sure as she sounded about what she wanted to do. What am I getting into? Her eyes scanned the small crowd of muggles on the deck, most of who were giving her fearful looks and were heading back inside the tower.

And then – she felt the presence of a hand over her shoulder.

"Hermione."

She turned to face him. "Stop it! Who are you, you –"

For once, he stood still and faced her, his body square to hers.

Hermione coughed words from her throat between her jumpy breath. "You've been – following me. For the longest time. I want to know what you want! How did you possibly disappear and reappear like that…without a wand? Malfoy?"

His grayish glance caught hers.

Hermione thought she saw the slightest twitch of a smirk on his lips.

"Yes, that's my name." He whispered, in a tone that could only count as soothing. "Don't be so scared. I wouldn't hurt you –"

"Don't lie!" she screeched, stepping back, away his transfixing aura. "I saw what you did – " She pointed her wand directly at his neck. 

Draco Malfoy glared at her. Without that ever-so-familiar look that confirmed his identity, he was a different person. He wasn't human.

"I said I wouldn't hurt you."

"Impedimenta!"

The blast of magic missed. Draco Malfoy stood there, as ever before. The muggle bystanders were beginning to walk away from the two suspicious strangers, nervously filing off the deck.

As if in slow motion, Hermione saw Draco take out his own wand from his pocket. She heard him calmly say a spell, and ducked, countering with her own spell as quick as her senses allowed. The movement was all too fast to follow, but she knew that the spell had missed and hit a muggle.

Any muggle that hadn't already been heading for the door certainly was now.

Hermione and Draco were now all-out dueling.

It was a pointless fight, this they both knew. Hermione never could hit him…and for some reason, he never hit her either.

It wasn't until they heard footsteps on the elevator clanking up the steel tower when they seemed to remember their surroundings.

Hermione's breath heaved as she held onto the railing. She was tired.

"The muggle – policemen – security – " she gasped.

Malfoy walked up to her until they stood toe-to-toe.

"You aren't really afraid of them, are you?"

"Well – I don't know, but…" she stammered. Ahhh, they were standing disturbingly close. It reminded her of the little dents on her wrists and…

Then –

As if an idea transformed instantly from mind to reality, Hermione felt Draco's lips, and the touch of his teeth lightly on her neck. Skin to skin, hair to hair, sense to sense, her entire body was intrigued. Her hands reached up – to resist? To pull him closer? – but he caught her fingers in his. This she could not help but to yield to, her wand, slipping easily from her grasp.

Clank.

The elevator was nearly at the top.

"We need to get out of here!" Hermione managed to say, never mind that she was now wand-less.

The elevator door was opening.

What happened next was completely unexpectedly. Draco grabbed Hermione by her shoulders, and jumped. They floated off the ground, and he lifted her the two of them over the railing – and plummeted down from the height of the Eiffel Tower.

If she had screamed, she couldn't have heard herself in the wind blowing past her ears. Hermione thought was would have died. The ground came faster and faster at her. Headfirst and holding on to each other, they fell. The heart quaked – 

Aaahhh!

We're going to die

Except that they didn't.

Some few feet from the ground, the rush slowed. The entire world slowed.

Hermione and Draco Malfoy landed, very softly on their feet, on what was a roof of a building of average height. Hermione's heart pounded like hailstones on pavement. And shaking like a leaf in a storm, she thought her knees would give way from beneath her. But she forced herself to look up and stare Draco in the face, no longer able to hide her unrestrained amazement.

~

Harry went over what he had been told in his mind again.

Cho Chang had tried to enter the Chamber of Secrets.

Well, of course she'd never have been able to. She must have known that.

But it was interesting, of course. After Hermione had given them that piece of information, it was sure that there had been something to do with the Books. Cho Chang had been tied to all sorts of dealings with the Dark Side lately, and even with the vampires.

Cho? The image of the girl Harry had liked in school came to his mind. It was a bit unsettling to think of her as anything but.

This is no time to get nostalgic, Harry grumbled to himself.

He sighed. A carefully aimed spell at the front door of the Hogwarts castle threw it open.

He entered.

The Great Hall was dusty. Harry remembered his mission and hurried through. The hallways he would always know by heart.

An echo rang out in the walls with every one of Harry's footsteps. It took him no more than a minute to find the correct passage that would take him closest to the out-of-order girls' toilet on the first floor.

Creak, went the door. Harry took a few steps, unsure of what was waiting for him.

The room was empty, the stalls cold and forlorn. The floor, which was almost always flooded, was dry. Harry went up to the sink that hid the entrance to the chamber, and peered at the tiny snake carved unto its tap.

"Open." He commanded. Hiss.

And the sink moved aside to reveal the pipe that lead downwards.

"Here goes," he said to himself.

Harry had not entered it since his second year at Hogwarts, but now stepped into the darkness.

It was unexpectedly fast. Harry zoomed down the grimy track, completely blind. He nearly yelled out at a point where the pipe lurched and threw him in the air for a moment. But in a short time, he hit the floor.

Harry got up, and lit up the darkness with the Lumos spell. It took no time before he came to the true entrance of the Chamber. On a side note, he had no idea Torch could have been a Parselmouth.

Anyways, Harry continued through the halls of the damp, underground rooms, passing all sorts figurines in the form of snake worship. He cast a few simple disarming spells in some strategic places, and before long, a patch of ordinary wall opened to reveal a pedestal lit with a magical light.

"Wow," Harry whispered, brushing some of his messy black hair from his forehead. The eerie light emitted from the display glowed about the room behind him. On it stood a large book. Its cover was a black, but almost translucent, as if carved from a large precious stone. Some runes were etched into the front. With a nervous hand, he reached for it.

"Ahhhhhh!"

The moment his fingers made contact with the pages, they were stuck tight. And Harry's entire body was electrocuted with a magic force beyond his recognition.

~

My god. Hermione thought. 

Draco had on a look that she couldn't decipher.

They stood there in a tense silence for a few seconds.

Hermione then noticed that Draco still had her wand, dangling it between his fingers like a cigarette at his side.

She reached out and snatched it.

"Petrificus –"

Draco made a slight shift of his shoulders as if to dodge the spell, but Hermione's movement shifted just as he did, and the blast of energy hit his shoulder. As if it didn't affect him, however, Draco opened his mouth to begin to say something –

"Expelliarmus! Suspendium Leviosa!" Hermione screamed.

And with that, the tall blond wizard was sent flying backwards into midair, and with a flick of her wrist, sent sprawling onto the edge of the flat rooftop.

Hermione sprang forward, took his wand from his loosened grasp and pinned him down by the shoulders.

Now she finally seemed to have the upper hand.

He stared coolly at her.

"What do you want from me?" Hermione demanded, breathing hard. "Leave me alone. Stop following me. If you don't get out of this city - you'll be sorry."

"You're threatening me like a blindfolded dragon in a cage," he said softly. Then a small smirk appeared on his face. "Wrong. Not up to your usual standard, Miss Grange–"

"I mean it!" she shrieked. "I'll report you, you despicable Death Eater. I'll take you to the ministry tonight and them deal with you! You'll go to Azkaban."

Draco broke out into a grin. Laughter was positively dancing in his sharp gray eyes. "Report me, then!"

Hermione clenched her fists harder upon his shoulders. Altogether fear, frustration and anger were bubbling up from her insides.

She jabbed both the wand tips into his neck. Her voice became dangerous. "I swear I'll kill you. Don't provoke me. Don't think I won't dare. I swear to god I'll do it."

And then Draco pushed her off of him, and in one quick movement flipped her onto her back. Their positions were switched.

"Where's your Gryffindor nobility now?" he asked mockingly. Strands of his blond hair fell close to Hermione's face. "After I saved you from that group of…despicable Death Eaters who were chasing you?"

"I could've dealt fine on my own!" Hermione snapped. She grabbed his shoulders and pushed him hard. Surprisingly easily she had him back on his back, but then got a feeling that he had been going easy on her the whole time.

"Either way, it's a wizard's debt."

He's right.

Damn.

He flipped her back again, his knees straddling her at the hips.

Hermione gazed up at him.

Smooth, pale skin coloration. Eyes like stone rings. Pink lips that revealed extraordinarily sharp teeth.

Why was it that something about him caught her every time, every time she meant to hurt him? And what was hidden beyond that strange appearance?

Somehow Hermione had the urge to reach up and run her thumb over his lips and teeth.

So she did.

He's still just a Death Eater.

As if he could hear her thoughts, he grinned.

"Blood sucker," he whispered, and brought his face to hers that their noses nearly touched.  

Oh god, don't.

"You bastard," she spat. But it was beyond that now.

Breathe in, breathe out.

"Demon?" With that he kissed her on the lips, and she knew that even if she wanted to, she could not push him off. She was losing all control of sanity.

"Incubus," she groaned.

And her eyes closed, and she rolled her tongue over his fangs, and his body fell completely limp against hers. And she didn't know anything else but to push harder into the kiss.

~