A/N: Well, after the excitement of seeing Draco stumble over himself last chapter, I've decided that some of my important characters finally needs to have their say. The fact that Hermione had a POV segment in chapter three wasn't laziness in keeping to the Draco/Ginny plotline, and just wait until you meet Fate…
Disclaimer: Well, I think I'm going to publish Nicholas Von Blüten, maybe Smidley, and possibly my characterisation of Fate, so they may one day belong to me. Until then, however, I'm just a poor college kid pattering around in a world that's not mine.
PS – This is the chapter where Deeper Than Blood starts to resemble a very bad acid trip. Hope you enjoy—I certainly did.
Blurring and stirring the truth and the lies
So I don't know what's real and what's not
Always confusing the thoughts in my head
So I can't trust myself anymore
- Going Under, Evanescence
Interlude with a Vampire
Chapter Seven
Clutching her cloak tightly around her throat, Hermione brought up the rear of the ragtag group of wizards that trooped across the soggy wetlands near the Danube River. They were somewhere around Galati, she knew, near the Ukraine, but Lupin refused to tell her where exactly they were headed. He had been very tight-lipped lately, especially in regards to where they were going today. Before, he had always filled Hermione in on the details pertaining to each case they were supposed to cover. Being a freelance Dark Arts fighter was no easy task, Hermione had discovered, but she was slowly learning to love the position. Never had the knowledge she had gleaned from Hogwarts come in so useful outside of the school's walls.
Lupin, who had been leading the procession, waved for the others to go ahead of him and trooped back to Hermione. Like Hermione, he was wearing the thick boots allotted to all of the people living in Smidley's Warehouse, and a pair of blue jeans that had more holes in them than stitches, it seemed. His cloak was left open in the front, exposing a knitted grey jumper. "We're almost there, you know," he said conversationally as he fell into step beside Hermione.
Hermione let out a grunt; exercise had never got along particularly well with her. After a summer of running around chasing down Dark Creatures, Hermione was slowly faring better, but they had been hiking since sun-up. Her frizzy mass of hair had been pulled back into something loosely related to a bun, but strands of it had a habit of drifting into her eyes at the most inconvenient moments. Still, she was determined to keep up with the full-fledged freelancers, as they called themselves. "Our destination is in the middle of nowhere?"
This inspired a laugh, as many of the things she said did. Inwardly, Hermione frowned. The freelancers were always laughing at her observations, but several times those same observations had saved them loads of trouble. "Yes, actually. We're to reach the Calling Stone soon."
"The Calling Stone?" Hermione demanded, her mind already racing. Calling Stones were rare enough to come by that they were only mentioned in passing in all of the texts Hermione had pored over in preparation for her summer training. There were supposedly seven of them in all, and all of them had Unplottable Spells placed on them, so that they would never be located on a map. "What sort of Dark Creature are we Calling?"
There was that mysterious smile that she was beginning to dislike. That mysterious smile meant that she would be in the dark for quite a while yet. Indeed, Lupin answered, "You'll see. Just hold on," and plodded up to the front of the group.
Hermione did not have long to wait, fortunately, for the group soon slowed its trek at the entrance of a clearing not an hour later. "This it, Smidley?" one of the freelancers called up the line.
"Yes—bags down!"
Like the rest of the freeloaders, Hermione unloaded her rucksack, hanging it on a low tree branch to protect it from the sodden terrain. As the only apprentice in the group, she was expected to wait in the rear, having as little training as she did. However, Jonathan Smidley, the unofficial co-leader of the Romanian freelancers, gestured impatiently for her to join up with himself and Lupin. They were deep in a whispered conference when she approached, both eyebrows raised. "Well, have we reached the Calling Stone?"
"Yes," Smidley said, breaking off the conversation. "It's in this clearing up here." Like most of the freelancers, he was gangling and undernourished from such a hard lifestyle, and his dark brown hair was going prematurely grey. He wore a pullover with the sleeves pushed up, and Hermione could see the criss-crossing pattern of scars that Smidley prided himself over twisting up to his elbows. "Granger, you've got to stay behind Lupin at all costs, understand me? The Undead's a tricky business with professionals—and most of these folks are as green as their gizzards."
"I don't think gizzards are green," Hermione observed honestly. Smidley's exasperated expression made her bite back her smile. "But, yes, you have my word that I'll stay back. No foolish heroics for me." She waved her hands in an "I surrender" motion to show that she fully intended to do as Smidley had asked.
It happened quickly; Smidley's hand dropped from the sky in a universal signal to move out, and Hermione found herself trailing Remus into the clearing, careful to mimic his footsteps. He smiled when he saw what she was doing, but did not say anything. Moving with an anomalous stealth, the freelancers very quickly set up a circle around a boxy, worn altar sitting in the dead centre of the dell. Atop the altar, Hermione could see an expanse of obsidian, darkened by the twisted tree branches all about. "The Calling Stone…" she whispered to herself.
"Wands out!" Smidley called to the freelancers. Hermione's wand found its way to her hand instinctively.
"Stay back," Lupin warned under his breath as he, like the rest of the freelancers, raised his wand towards the grey-stone altar. Hermione did not have to look around to know that they formed the perfect heptagonal ring around the Calling Stone—she had been the eighth person in line, after all. There were so many odd quirks that came with being a freelancer, she had discovered, and knowing picky little things like this was one of them. "This is often not pretty."
"What is?" Hermione wanted to ask, but bit her tongue on the question.
Later, she would write in her rapidly expanding journal about seeing the Calling Stone in use. Smidley was the first one to start chanting, saying the same three-word incantation over and over to a rhythm Hermione did not quite catch. The wizard on his right started chanting, initiating a round, until all seven people in the circle were in a perfect, seven-part chorus that went round and round. The words made Hermione pull her cloak tighter about her shoulders—some sort of ancient magic was being invoked, and she wasn't sure if she quite fancied the idea. She shivered as the incantations built to a steady roar.
Just as the wizards were nearly screaming, an almighty screech tore the air and the clearing exploded with green light. Hermione was the only one that flinched away. She had to stuff her hand into her mouth to muffle the gasp that nearly burst from her at the sight of the Undead being floating above the Calling Stone, suspended by the green light of seven wands.
She had read about the Undead in her books of course—pale, sickly sorts of creatures that drank the blood of cows and humans in order to stay Undead. When reading up on them, she had always thought that Draco Malfoy might have Undead blood in him somewhere, for the vampires in the pictures always seemed to look like him. This vampire that floated above the Calling Stone now—for he could be nothing else in Hermione's studied mind—could have passed as an older brother to Malfoy. They were built along the same lines, with the same aristocratic features, and the same white-blond hair. Peering over Lupin's shoulder, she could even see the same half-angry, half-tortured sneer on the vampire's face.
The vampire floated in mid-air, facing Smidley. Lupin and Hermione were perched just at the edge of his vision, which was actually so strong in the day that vampires shirked away from sunlight. The eyes that glared at Smidley now were blacker than the empty soul Hermione knew to be kept within the black pendant at his throat. From her vantage point, she could see the tiniest grey iris, and realised that the blackness of the vampire's eyes was really his pupils. It was probably more than coincidence that they had picked a cloudy day to Call a vampire.
"Why have you Called me here?" the vampire demanded of Smidley, his blackened eyes widening in obvious rage. "I am not a servant waiting at your beck and call, Smidley!"
Why did it not surprise Hermione that Smidley would hold first-name-basis relationships with the Undead?
Smidley threw his large head back and laughed outright, making the vampire tense up even more angrily. The vampire certainly did not look happy to be suspended above the Calling Stone. "We just needed some information, that's all. And then you can go back to your nap, Nicky."
Hermione blinked, almost positive that she had just heard Smidley refer to the vampire as "Nicky."
"The name," the vampire said stuffily, "is Nicholas Von Blüten, and I'd appreciate it if you remembered—"
"Sure, Nicky."
Because she had already spent over a week in his presence, Hermione sensed, more than saw, Lupin's perfunctory look at Smidley that clearly read, "Behave!" They made such odd leaders of the expedition, with Smidley's comical jollity and strapping energy, and Lupin's laid-back authority clashing or harmonising at random. Right now, Smidley chose to sober.
"Sorry, Herr Von Blüten," Lupin said, discreetly stepping forward to cover Hermione's existence outside of the heptagon. "You have my apologies for my partner's rashness."
Nick, for Hermione could scarcely think of him as anything else, revolved in place so that he was facing Lupin. A courteous challenge shimmered in the air between them, emphasised by the gasps from the remaining five members of the heptagon. Two Dark Creatures facing each other…"The leopard cannot change its spots."
"But he can purchase a new coat," Lupin replied tactfully, shooting a sideways glare at Smidley. The other man chose to let that off with a shrug. "What we need, Herr Von Blüten, is, like my partner so tactlessly put it, information. Our sources tell us that there's been Dark Magic in heavy abundance lately…"
"The Dark Lord is back, is he not?" Nick asked in the same voice an older sibling used to taunt a young child with a piece of candy. "Would he not be the cause of such Dark Magic, as you say?"
"That's not what I mean, and you know it." The set of Lupin's shoulders told Hermione that this would not be an easy interrogation. But that was what they deserved for this interview with an unwilling vampire, wasn't it? "That's Unforgivables, and nothing that would set the Underworld in motion. I'm talking about ancient magicks, magicks that shouldn't ever be awakened. The vampires, the selkies, the nymphs and dryads, even the sirens down on the Black Sea—there's turmoil there. What's going on?"
There was a predatory gleam in Nick's eyes. "Drop your wands and I will tell you," he sing-songed, dropping the angry mask in favour of a much more malicious and evil one. In the cold light from that mask, Hermione suppressed a shiver.
"And become the newest members of the Von Blüten squad?" Smidley demanded, drawing the vampire's attention back to him. He snorted very openly and raised his wand a few centimetres for good measure. Hatred blazed momentarily in Nick's eyes. "Not bloody likely. Wouldn't want to give you a bragging post, would we? Eight freelancers, all added to your squad in time for afternoon tea?"
The air changed then, swapping from average summery air to something darker, deeper, untold. The change was punctuated by uneasy looks between Lupin and the rest of the heptagon, who had up until now remained silent. Had she not been clutching her cloak tightly about her throat already, Hermione would have done so now. She felt as though a thousand eyes were boring into her, exposing every little secret that she had ever kept. Her very essence was wide open to the general public.
"Eight, you say?" Nick's voice was soft, deceptive. "A Calling Circle involves only seven…"
In a moment of unbroken fate, Hermione's brown eyes locked with the dead, black-consumed eyes of a vampire.
"She is outside the Calling Circle—you can't touch her, Nick!" she heard Lupin snap distantly, but it did not register; she was drawn in, entranced by the utter blackness she saw there…A thousand things were visible within nothing, ten thousand even. Truths, half-truths, lies mingled together into one mass of knowledge that escaped beyond the edge of her mortal mind, a verisimilitude so great that she could not hope to encompass its mass with her limited comprehension.
Nicholas Von Blüten looked away, and the feeling exploded from her, draining her. She stumbled forward as if invisible strings had tugged her feet, and fell. Her palm tingled as her hand penetrated the Calling Circle. Dazedly, she was aware that Lupin was straining to reach her, but she was suddenly hundreds of kilometres away, trapped in her own world. Everybody but herself and the vampire was immaterial here.
"It was your fault that you brought a Guide, then, Lupin!"
Outwardly, she was aware that several people were shouting in disbelief, that Lupin was calling for her stop, but she only saw the dark swath Nick made in the air as he swooped towards her—the cold, unreal feeling of his hand as it captured hers—the sickening stomach-drop of being air-born—an arctic slap, like ice to her face as she fell alongside the vampire into the Calling Stone—the whirl of wind rushing through her hair…
They hit the ground at a high enough velocity to make both living and Undead bump and roll to separate stops on cold stone. Dazedly, she forced her prickling muscles to a sitting position and looked all around her, strangely devoid of all fear. She could have laughed in Voldemort's serpentine face right now.
Nick had apparently hauled her into some sort of gothic palace, suspended from the books she had read as a child. They were in a room large enough to be the Great Hall at Hogwarts, or even bigger. Hermione could not quite make out the ceilings in the darkness, but she could see great stone pillars with foreign, gothic symbols carved around the bases in angry, brooding strokes. A smooth stone floor stretched all about her, broken only by an obsidian circle only metres away. "What's going on?" Hermione managed, though her tongue felt as though it had been glued to the bottom of her mouth. She felt a sticky warmth on her cheek and knew that she had gashed her face at least once on the rough trip.
"Welcome to the realm of the Undead, mortal," Nick's voice came from her left. Twisting about with her wand in the ready position, she could see the Undead vampire grinning maniacally at her. A stab of fear penetrated the surreal haze that had fallen over her upon entering the Calling Circle. "Put the wand away—it will not work here."
Irrationally, Hermione's grip tightened on her wand.
"Have it your way, then," Nick said, rising easily to his feet. "If you can work the ancient magicks, why bother with a wand?" His eyes, blacker than they had been in the clearing, were large and amused at her expense. "You should be honoured, really. Only the Undead are usually allowed here. Very few others could ever survive."
Carefully, Hermione rose to her feet and tucked her wand into the pocket of her jeans. "'Honoured' wouldn't be how I would put it," she answered honestly, her eyes narrowed. "Why did you drag me here? All they wanted out of you was a bit of information about the strange happenings of Dark Magicks lately…"
"What they wanted is no concern of mine!" Wispy blond hair fell into smouldering black eyes, silencing her more effectively than any charm. With an aggravated sigh that expressed world-weariness, ironically enough, Nick twitched his head in a "come-hither" motion. "Come, before my patience grows thin. We have much to do."
Hermione's knees buckled, but her Gryffindor spirit shone through. "I'm not going anywhere. I don't intend to end up like…like…"
"Like what? Like my kin?" Nick snapped, striding closer to her. Before Hermione could so much as cry out, he had reached out a hand and swiped a bit of the blood off her cheek. Disgusted, she watched as he licked his fingers and cocked his head to the side. After a moment, he shook his head in similar disgust. "Do not worry. You are not my type." His feral grin did nothing to assuage the sudden flame of fear that burst within Hermione, making her gasp from the unbridled shock. "Too salty."
"Er, thanks, I think," Hermione managed to stutter.
"Anytime. Now will you move, woman? I have no time for these silly games!" The clammy hand grabbed her own once again, forcing Hermione into a quick walk. "We have only fourteen minutes until the Calling Stone reactivates itself! Mortals cannot stay here!"
"Why did you kidnap me if you're not going to turn me into…into an Undead?" Hermione asked, her confusion growing as they turned into a darkened corridor. It reminded her of a morbid, nightmarish version of Hogwarts, where the suits of armour looked even more terrifying, and the grim reality served only to make the edge of the fear more cutting.
Nick gave her a disparaging look, and she was reminded once again of the most recent encounter she had had with Draco Malfoy. "Even I can barely stomach an unveiling into the Undead. There's no love-nip on the neck—I would have to drink all of your blood. Before you get any ideas, I will assure that I am not that much of a glutton. The other members of my clan, maybe, but never me."
The corridor morphed into a series of corridors, all spineless, twisting sort of effigies of each other. One corridor moved into another without so much as a change of direction, suits of armour blended together into one unappealing mass of metal. Hermione's feet were moving quickly, numbly, but her mind was racing much, much faster than even the pair could fly. Her eyes were flitting, never resting, taking in every detail like she had been taught with the freelancers.
"So how do you eat if you don't like making Undead?" Hermione finally asked, eyes narrowing suspiciously on an oaken door.
"We are a civilised breed, Ms. Granger." Hermione did not ask how the vampire knew her name; it rolled from his tongue like he was familiar with her. Maybe he knew her already. Did vampires know who would join their kin beforehand? The thought made Hermione shudder to herself. "We have kitchens for this sort of thing. And pubs, as you say."
The idea of a blood-pub was so ridiculous that Hermione's feet actually stalled for a brief moment, earning her a perverse look from Nick. She hastened her pace to catch up, reminding herself that annoying a vampire in his own lair might not be the brightest of ideas she had ever had. "How do you know my name?" she ventured after a moment.
Nick did not reply for the longest of moments, and they walked in a pronounced silence, for Hermione's boots were charmed not to make any noise, and Nick had an ethereal, floating aura about himself that made Hermione wonder if his boots touched the ground at all. There was very little that she actually knew about vampires, even though she had read every text she could get her hands on, in preparation for her summer apprenticeship.
"Fate. Do you believe in Fate, Miss Granger?" he finally asked, his heavy accent strangely clipped. He was not looking at her, but at the ground in front of him, as though in deep thought.
"Predestined embodiment of life?" Hermione asked for clarity, and received another irritated look for her efforts. She decided to try a much simpler tack. "Like True Love and the like?"
"Whole love." At Hermione's perplexed look, Nick explained, "That's what we call it here in the Realm. But the concepts are the same. It cannot be a fluke—there's some sort of magic there that effects everybody, mortal, Undead. Love so immense that it encompasses hatred, despair, beliefs, even…death." He sounded a bit impatient with her, as though he were waiting for her to land on some great epiphany that she had clearly missed.
Hermione thought briefly of Harry, who had been saved by such a love, only to be delivered into the hands of its antithesis: reality. Had Lily Potter's magic not saved him that night, Harry would never have had to deal with the Dursleys, Death Eaters, death, Dark Lords, and very many other things that began with the nefarious letter "D." Fate had dealt him an unkind hand. Still, she wondered where Nick was going with this. "True—or Whole Love, that's destiny?"
"Destiny. Ah, yes. Very closely related, and often mistaken for Fate."
Hermione had read several papers on the subjects of Fate and destiny, but could never tell where one began and the other ended. Fate, she had gathered, was one's main purpose in life, and destiny was how one would end up, or with whom. But the subjects were so closely interrelated that Hermione really didn't spend too much time brooding over them. She preferred solid, tangible things and the mysteries involved around that sort of thing. Fate and destiny were too far within the borderlines of Divination for her. "Why do you ask?"
"No mortal can enter the Realm of the Undead without the proper fate. I was curious to see if you were aware of your fate yet." Another long, heavy pause, as vampire and mortal moved together. "I think…no, your fate is an interesting one, but do not ask me why. It shall be explained to you...someday."
She bit her lip as Nick pulled open a door buried in an alcove, and gestured impatiently for her to go through ahead of him. Although walking with a vampire at her back was not high on Hermione's list of things to accomplish in life, she let her Gryffindor instincts lead her into what was obviously some type of laboratory. A long table split a darkened room in half, leaving two blank expanses before the rows and rows of metal shelves began. Every flat surface was covered to the point of bending with strange gadgets that rivalled those Hermione had seen in all of the horror movies she had watched during the holidays and as a child.
"My laboratory," Nick said by way of explanation.
"It's, er, nice," Hermione complimented, tearing her eyes off of what looked to be a modified dentists' drill. She thought fleetingly of her parents, locked in the safe house, but now was not the time to think of such things. Now was the time to figure out why exactly she had been dragged into the Realm of the Undead, where few mortals had walked before. She ought to feel honoured, really, but she found that the terror was too great for such an achievement. "What do you experiment on?"
"Mortals." Nick flicked a Muggle switch in one corner and two lanterns sizzled to life on opposite sides of the room, although they flickered several times. The contraptions looked a trifle less sinister. "You'll have to forgive the Muggle electricity—the Von Blüten Estate was built by Muggles in the other Realm, and they are usually so insistent about using electricity, although we told them…" He trailed off, shrugging that information aside, and crossed to the opposite end of the table. What looked to be a potions kit was nestled in between other contrivances.
"You experiment on mortals?" Hermione demanded, her voice squeaking.
"Calm down, foolish girl. I did not bring you here to experiment on you—no, you are here for other purposes entirely." Nick was not looking at her as he said this; his attention was focused on two vials of potion that he held very carefully in both hands. As Hermione watched, wide-eyed, he set one of the vials down and picked up an eyedropper instead. "Tell me what you know about Ritualistic Magicks."
Hermione's attention was drawn away from a morbid-looking ensemble of blades. "Pardon?"
"Ritualistic Magicks—particularly from the earliest centuries," Nick replied impatiently. However, his hands were steady as he carefully released droplets of a bright green potion into a clear liquid. The water was slowly turning blood red. "Not so much the rituals themselves, either. The roles involved."
Hermione's brow crinkled; they had covered this during her fourth year at Hogwarts, which was a hazy year for her. When they hadn't been helping Harry out, it had been a constant battle with Ron. Being friends with those two certainly made schoolwork harder, but Hermione was able to remember at least three of the ritualistic formations. "Well...it depends on which part of the world you want. I mean, the peoples of what is now South America believed in a seven-point formation, like the one utilising the Calling Stone. European peoples adopted that later, yes, but until then they used a simpler six-point formation with the traditional roles as opposed to a chanting round."
She was about to go on about the four-point formation, but Nick shook his head abruptly. "Tell me about that one," he commanded. "That is the one that interests me."
For a moment, Hermione wondered why a member of the Undead didn't know about Ritualistic Magick. It was one of the oldest branches of magic, perhaps older than the Undead themselves. Of course, there really wasn't a way to tell the age of a vampire without being a vampire yourself, so Nick could have been her age, or around to see the fringe end of Ritualistic Magick. Hermione did not question it as she categorised the knowledge she had gleaned from this topic in her head.
"The Six-Point Ritual, derived from theories of the astrologer Arigone, involves, as made obvious by its name, six people. Arigone was a firm believer in the Greek Zodiac, and selected six signs (nobody is quite sure how he did this) of the Muggle Zodiac, which varies in certain dates from the wizarding Zodiac. When working together, he claimed, these signs were potent enough to create…well, great things, he said. Nobody has ever translated exactly what he was theorising."
Hermione paused in her explanations to look questioningly at Nick. "Why are you asking me to explain all of this? Don't you know?" she asked suspiciously. "You're the vampire here! Isn't this supposed to be in your instincts, all of this old magic?"
"Humour me." Nick's voice was flat as he said this, but the set in his shoulders expressed quite a bit of agitation. He was moving, Hermione noticed with some trepidation, away from the potions kit and towards the knife set she had spotted earlier. Her throat felt dry, but there was nothing else to do but comply with the vampire until she could form a better escape route.
"The premise for the entire ritual is very simple—an incantation, chanting in unity, the setting of an old wizard ceremonial ground, the placement of the star Vega at zenith…"
Nick's head flew up, making Hermione jump despite herself. "Vega, you say?" he asked, silver eyes narrowing into dangerous crescents. "Why Vega?"
Hermione shrugged. "Professor Vector never really covered that much. In a few thousand years, it will be the star that all of the other stars appear to revolve around, and something about an apocalypse occurring when Vega takes the sky…" She trailed off, uncertain as to how long vampires lived. Her textbooks had been utterly unclear about anything relating to vampires—she usually went off of her Muggle roots in her calculations of the Dark Beings. Sure, she knew little things, like the fact that vampires had eyes so sensitive to light that anything but firelight was claimed to kill them, but she was in the dark on some very important issues around vampires.
"So, this six-point ritual—what are the…positions played?" Nick asked carefully. He was fiddling with something Hermione couldn't see in the low light, so she turned her eyes away to scrutinise the shelves.
"Well, there's the Initiator, the Guide, the Lover…" Hermione trailed off once again, but this time, her eyebrows were hunkered low in suspicion. Her eyes, however, slowly widened until they became lakes of white and brown. "That's what you called me earlier. A Guide. Am I…am I to participate in one of these rituals?"
"The other three positions, Miss Granger? You didn't finish."
It was then that Hermione decided that she did not like vampires. Nick was too fickle a personality, flitting between this character and that personification. Cold and calculating one moment, gruff and abrupt the next, and haughty the third. It was a cycle through all of the personalities she happened to loathe; yes, Nicholas Von Blüten was very much like Draco Malfoy.
"One of the blood, one of the fire, one of the leaden paths, one of the lighted heart, one of the darkness returned to light, and one of the hidden," Hermione quoted, feeling quite irritated. Shouldn't a vampire know these sorts of things? Why was he making her repeat trivial information? "It's written in every Ancient Magicks textbook a girl can get her hands on. Some refer to them as the Guide, the Brother, the Initiator, the Lover, the Foe, and the Sleeper. Their Fates are written the moment they take life into their lungs."
"Very good, Miss Granger. You really are quite the walking textbook." In the time that she had been recalling everything she had learned, Nick had been chopping up an unknown, murky-green sort of leaf into the potions he had been working with. "I had not believed it when Fate came to dinner last week, but…"
"Fate came to dinner?" Hermione demanded, feeling perplexed.
The smile Nick gave her was tempered with amusement at her confusion. She did not like the smug side of Nick either, she determined. "Fate is a compulsion. When it feels that it has grown thick enough, such in the case of your friend Harry Potter, it decides to drop in on a meal at the Von Blüten estate. Don't know why—we're such boring dinner hosts…"
Hermione's head was spinning by now. "Fate is a person?" she queried, trying to make a head or tails of the entire mess. "I thought that it was a…circumstance of sorts that differentiated between people."
"The under-workings of the magical world are strange, I'll grant you that. You should see it when Death comes to dinner—of course, it rarely ever does. I personally feel that it dislikes us because we cheated it, but what can one do? The compulsions really must like our cuisine." Two very sinister fangs showed as Nick smiled outright for the first time. Hermione blinked and the smile was gone, but she could see the tips of the fangs at the corners of Nick's chapped lips. Did all vampires have chapped lips?
"Ahem." Nick's pointed throat-clearing noise drew her fascination away from vampires and lip-balm. Looking down, Hermione realised that he was extending one of the vials of potion to her. "Drink that."
Hermione took the potion, but did nothing more than hold it. "What's in it?" she asked suspiciously, and held it up so that she could view it in better light. The liquid inside was strangely translucent for all of the ingredients she had just seen him throw inside, but six years of potion-making had taught her to expect the unexpected. She eyed the blue-green liquid now with distaste.
"A simple Seeing Sluice. Potent, yes, but simple. As the Guide, no Undead can touch you or hurt you, so the potion will have no harmful effects. It will enable you to view the doorways to the Realm of the Undead, so that you can Guide the person you have been sent to Guide properly." Now Nick's smile was twisted, almost bitter. He looked less frightening with such a common expression on his face. "Fate warned me that this would happen last week at dinner, but I never imagined you would arrive with Smidley."
Hermione uncapped the potion. "You know Smidley?" she asked curiously, moving her hand so that the liquid swished back and forth. She wafted the smell closer to her face, but could detect nothing in the unfamiliar scent.
Vampires may not age, Hermione remembered, but they certainly had old men's eyes. "Smidley and I attended Hogwarts together, yes. We were freelancers, but the Von Blüten clan decided they wanted me for their own. It's a profitable life in the Realm of the Undead, yes, but humans suddenly become very…trying." Nick's eyes snapped back to their usual cold vibrancy. "Drink the potion."
Feeling as though she could possibly be making the biggest mistake of her life, Hermione tipped her head back and guzzled the potion down. She spluttered immediately, but the damage had already been done—the oily substance greased down her throat, sliding sickeningly through her oesophagus. "What," she managed, "did you just feed me? That didn't taste like Seeing Sluice!"
"Sluices come in all tastes and colours, Miss Granger. Pleasure meeting you. Be sure to drop in sometime within the next couple of weeks."
Hermione only had a flash of Nick's blond hair and the darkened laboratory before she felt the inexplicable pull on every part of her body, jerking her through substantial and insubstantial material. Her stomach wrenched painfully, and then she was flying, her throat somewhere among her toes. The world blurred together as she plummeted through the castle corridors, bulls-eyeing for the Calling Stone.
With a sickening lurch, she hit the stone and passed through, heading into sunlight. "Stupefy!" Before she had time to register this, however, unconsciousness had swept in and carried her off to its own world.
*
While the world slept, Draco Malfoy brooded.
He picked up the unfamiliar ballpoint pen, using his left hand to manoeuvre it into the proper position between his fingers (he never had this problem with quills, but the pens were so bulky and unfamiliar…), and poised it over the empty page of the Soul Book. He had flipped through the entire book when it had called out to him, but each page was purposely blank. That left one of two meanings: he had either given up his soul by asking the daughter of a family feuding with his out on a formal occasion, or the Soul Book wanted him to write inside it.
He sincerely hoped that it was the second option.
His looping script raced tidily across the page. "I just asked an innocent girl out on the world's most impossible date, and in doing so, furthered the cause of the most nefarious criminal to tread through Britain. One might say that my daily accomplishment is complete."
What the Soul Book returned just underneath his sentence was a sketch of some sort. A comic, Draco realised, looking at the brightly coloured lines. A Muggle comic of a man wearing a tight suit and decked in a cape. Underneath that, written in Draco's own handwriting, was the label "Superman!"
Draco snorted despite himself. "Hardly," he wrote in reply. Feeling inspired, he continued, "I don't wear leotards." It struck him then that he was conversing with a book, but he found himself strangely apathetic.
The Soul Book answered yet again, but this time the drawing was a stick figure with balls for his hands and feet. As Draco watched, the figure wiggled into life, pointing up at him. The stick-shoulders shook with laughter. "Hey!" he protested aloud, and hastened to write, "Spare a bloke some dignity here, will you?"
"Sorry!" flashed across the page.
"You'd better be," Draco muttered uncharitably. He carried the book over to his bed and sat with his back propped against the wall and the book leaning against his knees. After a moment of thought, he wrote, "What should I talk about?"
Draco dropped the pen and listened to it skitter across the hardwood tiles in disbelief as a sketched portrait of Ginny Weasley looked up at him through the mutable pages of the Soul Book. She was not smiling, but her _expression was inherently amused, and stands of red dangled in front of her eyes, like they always did whenever she wore her hair down. It was the Ginny Weasley everybody could see, and nobody could fathom.
The Ginny Weasley that had agreed to go with him on Thursday.
Without thinking, he scribbled down, "What about her? She's my…" He trailed off in his head and on the page. What was she to him? There was physical attraction, definitely. Ginny Weasley was, hands-down, the most beautiful girl he knew. She didn't have his mother's classic beauty, either; no, her pulchritude was inner, like Jessie Daleford's was. When her eyes were closed, it was almost non-existent, but when she looked at him…
When had he started feeling like this? On the train, she had been pretty in the conventional sense, just a friend. Had it started then? Did sharing such a moment turn on this physical and emotional attraction? Draco had cried to his mother loads of times as a very young child, before Lucius's teachings took hold, but he felt no more than the bond of a dutiful son. Draco had no other relationships to go off of, because nobody but her mother had ever or would ever see him cry.
"Friend," he finally wrote, but the word did not show up in the Soul Book. "Well, she is," he said aloud, and hurried to write that down as well. He wasn't sure what he was trying to prove. "We can be nothing else."
The page flashed red, openly snubbing him.
First a temperamental phoenix, and now a temperamental book, Draco thought to himself, and the page flashed red to say, "Deal with it!" Why me?
Sighing, Draco returned to writing in the book once more. "There is nothing I can say to convince you otherwise that Ginny Weasley can remain nothing more than a friend, is there? Life for me is too dangerous to be carrying emotional baggage that comes with the boyfriend territory, and she's a marked member of the Order of the Phoenix!"
"So?" flashed back at him.
"So, a relationship like this would be like…Romeo and Juliet," Draco finally wrote, casting about for inspiration. He'd plucked those names out the book of Shakespeare's works that Professor Dumbledore had sent him hours before. "I read the synopsis—and they both die! If I die, my soul is gone. Then where would you be? What's a Soul Book without a living soul?"
The book snapped closed, nearly taking his thumb from the rest of his hand. Draco shook out the offended object as he watched the cover shift fill with gold-leafed words. Potions For When Life Gets You Down: An Intellectual Guide to Your Everyday Needs blinked out at him defiantly. Draco was vaguely reminded of the time he had unthinkingly plucked this book from the shelves of Professor Snape's office. Had he known what trouble it was going to be, he would not have touched the Soul Book.
Its very aura reproachful, the Soul Book glided open and lay prostrate against his knees. Draco stared at the tauntingly empty page for a long minute. "We just can't," he wrote at length. "After the dinner on Thursday, it must end."
For a long moment, the book did not reply. Finally, in the tiniest script imaginable, it answered, "Are you sure?"
Are you sure? The question echoed in Draco's head, bouncing back and forth between synapses and grey matter until it threatened to overthrow his senses. Closing his eyes, he saw. In that moment of uncertainly, a thousand different scenarios and endings played against the tarp of his own eyelids. Happy endings with normal, successful lives to boot. Jollity. Delight. Empty endings where life had not been reached. Depression. Broken hearts. Living in secret. Broken souls. Smiling children immortalised themselves in Draco's mind, but with them came children that never smiled. They were children with his blond hair, with Ginny's red hair, with brown and silver eyes. Pale, freckled manifestations of humanity.
His ears heard the imaginary tolls of the wedding bells that could come. Behind that, a grating resistance, came the funeral marches, and the grief-ridden fugues. So many happy emotions mingled with the destructive ones, neither staying its hand over the other. It was a gamble, he realised now. A gamble of life and death.
Love.
Hatred.
"She doesn't deserve the punishment of making that choice. She's on the side of good, and I'm all but on the side of evil." Slowly, Draco rested his forehead on his knees, his palms flat against the Soul Book. "She deserves somebody that can be there for her. I may not be able to be that."
A twinge of pain in his palm made him gasp and recoil from the Soul Book. In his abrupt movement, the Soul Book flew from his lap and onto the floor, its binding facing up. Carefully, Draco leaned down and collected it, dreading the message that would be waiting for him.
"That isn't your choice to make," was all the book said. "Don't ever give up something this good when it's not your decision. Play your cards wisely." With those words ingrained into Draco's conscience, the book closed with an air of finality and left young Draco Malfoy with a world of choice on his thin shoulders.
*
The lull of familiar voices was just enough to pull Hermione out of the obsidian void and into the physical awareness of her own fateful body. She felt life return first to her fingers, prickling up her arms and down her body, finally gathering on the tips of her toes and head. When the sensation covered her whole form, she let out the softest of gasps and opened her eyes.
It had fallen dark in the time she had been out, she noticed immediately, for she could see nothing. Her body was trapped in what felt like a cocoon of blankets, leaving only her head and neck exposed to the cool Romanian night. She could smell the familiarity of the warehouse, and knew that she was on her cot, although she couldn't see at all. However, she could still hear two very familiar voices continuing a quiet, but intense conversation. Smidley's guttural tones clashed against Lupin's diplomatic ones, causing Hermione to tune her awareness in so that she could hear better. It took her a moment to distinguish words, but she immediately gathered that they had been discussing her.
"Spent nearly a quarter hour in the Realm, and returns unscathed? I find that hard to believe even in your book, Lupin!"
"She wasn't unscathed—there are several abrasions on her face and arms, yet none on her neck. No sign of a vampire's bite…stop putting so much garlic in her food! I've told you before—there's no way he could have made her a vampire in the amount of time that they spent together!"
Smidley thought that she was a vampire? That would be just like him, Hermione reflected a trifle bitterly, to immediately think the worst. He was as paranoid (and nearly as scarred) as Mad-Eye Moody. Sometimes the similarities were a bit ridiculous in themselves, but Hermione had always found Smidley's sense of humour preferable to Moody's brand of fearful presentation. It took a lot of gumption to actually dislike Smidley.
"Innovations, Lupin, innovations. The vampires are always looking for them. They could have found a way by now. Why else would he entrance somebody into a Calling Circle and leave them mortal? You remember Nick from school—devious, cunning—"
"Your best friend." Lupin's voice was steely. "Smidley, will you just get over the fact that Ryan just wanted to chase his dreams? His existence in the Undead was just an accident, and you're perfectly aware of that. Nicholas Ryan wouldn't throw life away willingly!"
Nicholas Von Blüten was really Nicholas Ryan, and he had attended Hogwarts with both Lupin and Smidley? Hermione pushed herself up onto her elbows, her brows lowering dangerously. In her adjusted night-vision, she could see the silhouettes of the two men aglow against the small cooking fire clear across the warehouse. Glancing up through the hole in the ceiling (charmed not to let rain or snow in), Hermione could see that Lyra was nearly at zenith, so it was only near 11 p. m. or so. Most of the freelancers would still be out at the pubs they frequented in the tiny villages nearby. The others would be on assignment.
Lupin's ears pricked at the noise of Hermione's movement, and he turned, gesturing for her to join them. Feeling clumsy and heavy-footed, she padded over and accepted the bowl of generic stew that was passed her way. "How do you feel?" Lupin asked by way of conversation.
Hermione did not like the way that Smidley was eyeing her. "Like I've just had my head wrung through a colander, thanks," she replied honestly. "Did somebody Stun me?"
"Jones. Eager young whelp," Smidley said with a snort, finally tearing his suspicious gaze from her. "Don't know why we took him in the first place…" He passed Hermione a canteen of water. "Drink up—being Stunned usually dehydrates you some."
Three long gulps and half a bowl of stew later, Lupin shifted uneasily and finally cleared his throat. "What exactly happened in the Realm of the Undead? We need to know for scientific purposes, and see if we can get you an antidote for anything they might have done to you. We didn't detect any spells, but…"
"You wouldn't, would you? The same rules don't apply to the Realm of the Undead." Her appetite gone, Hermione pushed the bowl away from her and huddled closer to the fire. She felt cold just thinking about the strange events that had transpired in the other dimension. "Nothing really happened. We talked, mostly. He asked me about Ritualistic Magick…" She stopped, her eyes narrowing. "He said that I was a Guide—that I was to participate in a ritual. I haven't heard a thing about it yet, unless it has something to do with Harry and I've been doing it unthinkingly."
Smidley and Lupin shared an uneasy look that set Hermione on edge. A serpentine snort from nearby interrupted them, reminding Hermione that Smidley's beloved Komodo dragon had yet to retire. Neither the werewolf nor the freelancer jumped, but Hermione froze for the briefest of instants. "The Six-Point Ritual?" Smidley finally asked in a careful voice. "That was always Nick's speciality, yes, so he would know a lot about that. Are you sure that he called you a Guide?"
"Positive. And I'm in the proper astrological time frame for it, aren't I? Virgo?" Hermione looked from one face to the other, both marred with lines of age and amusement. "He wouldn't tell me anything more about it—we started talking about Fate and compulsions. I got quite lost, and he just made me drink this potion—"
"Potion?" demanded Lupin and Smidley on the same breath. "You drank a potion that a vampire gave you?" Smidley continued, blue eyes wide with disbelief. "Granger, are you mad? Hasn't Lupin taught you better than that?"
"It was a Seeing Sluice! I watched him make it!" Hermione replied, bridling at his accusation. She wasn't lying entirely; she had watched Nick complete the potion, and the ingredients she had seen were those in a Seeing Sluice. Fortunately, neither Lupin nor Smidley called her on the fact that a Seeing Sluice had to simmer for nearly two hours. She had only been in the Realm of the Undead for fourteen minutes, as it was. "He said it was to help me find any entrances into the Realm. Something about the ritual. I don't know."
Both men were clearly trying to digest this information and having difficulty. "Did he, er, drink any of your blood?" Lupin asked, trying another tack.
"He swiped some off of my face," Hermione offered, still feeling repulsed by the gesture. "But, apparently, I wasn't his type." She smiled, trying to relive the pun, but the jollity was too light for such a solemn moment. Finally, she busied herself with taking a long pull from the canteen.
"Why would a vampire draw an innocent girl—a Guide, nonetheless—into the Realm and only give her a potion?" Smidley demanded of Lupin, his low voice guttural. "It just doesn't add up."
Lupin offered no more than a shrug, his face expressionless. "You remember Nick as well as I do. Probably better, even—I was always gone with the Marauders." A thoughtful pause ensued, and Lupin used the silence to poke the fire with a long branch. "He nearly beat James for Head Boy, didn't he?"
James could be none other than James Potter, late father to her best friend. Such casual mention of the long-dead Mr. Potter made Hermione ache all over again for Harry, who was doubtless asleep on his tiny bed on the second floor of number four, Privet Drive. He was probably, Hermione reflected bitterly, ensconced in the wicked claws of some unholy nightmare.
"Yes. Bit of a geek, he was. Always reading," Smidley recalled with narrowed eyes. "Why? What are you getting at, Lupin? I know that look, and it always means that you've got something up your sleeve that I probably won't like."
When Lupin leaned forward, it struck Hermione once again about how different the two men really were. Gryffindor or not, Lupin was going to lean back and assess the situation before jumping in. Smidley would always be impulsive and brash. "You said it before—Nick was fascinated with the Six-Point Ritual. He knew a lot more than most specialists at the age of seventeen. That's why he went to the vampires in the first place, nearly sixteen years ago. He was positive that the movement in the Dark Arts had something to do with the ritual."
"I seriously don't think that Granger here is a Guide, though."
Granger the Guide. The alliteration was going to make her either sigh or laugh, and she wasn't sure which yet.
"Au contraire, my friend." Lupin shook a finger at Smidley, making Hermione smile inwardly. The werewolf still had his playful moments. "Vampires recognise things like that. If Nick thinks Hermione's a Guide, strong chances are that she's a Guide."
"Who do I have to guide, though?" Hermione demanded, suddenly quite perplexed. "I'm severely confused—apparently this is my fate. But is it? Is fate assigned to one person? Nick was talking about Fate and how it came to dinner and…" She trailed off, realising how ridiculous she sounded. "I'm sorry, the incident must have messed with my mind. "Movements in the Dark Arts? Would those have anything to do with a ritual?"
"I hope not." Lupin took a large bite of his own stew, prompting Hermione to remember her hunger. She drew her bowl back to her, listening intently. "But it could very well be. The dark beings usually aren't this restless. Even other werewolves are sensing tension in the air. I thought it might have been just me, but apparently everybody I've talked to feels it."
"The werewolves, ghosts, nightwolves, a lot of the enchanted mummies, the fairies and pixies, the nymphs…" Smidley ticked off several enchanted creatures on his fingers. "It's as widespread as South America, and even some of the penguin hybrids down in Antarctica have been acting strangely. Reports from all over have been piling up."
Hermione's eyebrows extended low over her eyes. "Do you think," she asked nervously, "that this has something to do with…with Voldemort?"
"Think?" Smidley snorted. "I'd bet my bottom Sickle on it."
"I think," Lupin said, shooting Smidley a look, "that there is one man that could explain all of this to us." He looked at Hermione significantly, and in the light of the grey-eyed gaze, she understood what she was getting at.
Smidley looked between one and the other. "You don't think…You're not writing to Nick!"
The werewolf and the Head Girl looked at him as though he had given up protective magic and had taken up ballet instead. "I'll start drafting a letter to Professor Dumbledore immediately," Hermione promised, and rushed off to find her stationery set.
Ron and Harry would have laughed if they knew that her first action after such an event would be to write to Professor Dumbledore, but Hermione knew immediately that it was the right thing to do in this situation. If anybody had any clue what was going on, it would naturally be Professor Dumbledore.
Wouldn't it?
*
Nicholas Von Blüten looked up from the Muggle newspaper he had lifted on his last trip into the nearest English-speaking town as Fate, the compulsion, walked into the room and lifted both eyebrows at the young vampire. "Ah, my protégé!" Fate cried in obvious delight, a wicked smile lighting the chiselled face. Out of the compulsions, Fate was the handsomest, and his beauty only seemed to magnify whenever his host had a very strong attachment to Fate. "How fares my young blood-sucker this morning?"
Nick did not bother to check his watch. "You're in the wrong time frame, old man," he replied as he returned to the obituaries section of the newspaper. "Morning was hours ago."
"It's always the morning of some new time for somebody!" Fate riposted, clearly amused. Nick forced himself not to roll his eyes and continued scanning the page. He hated dealing with the compulsions, and Fate was particularly challenging. "Today is the morning of Hermione Granger! See how real I am? Almost as alive as I was for that little Harry fellow!"
"Ah. You just missed Ms. Granger, actually. She dropped in for a visit, just like you predicted. It's good that I gave up betting with you. Very strange girl."
Fate looked at hard at the vampire, smoky eyes fathomless as ever. Still, without looking at him, Nick could not help but detect a very large aura of amusement. "You've taken a fancy to a mortal?" he squealed with some delight. Nick struggled not to roll his eyes once again; when Fate became strong enough, he turned out to be very openly homosexual. While Death was quiet and enjoyed a good "Red Cap crosses the road" as much as the next dark being, Fate was very flamboyant and laughed at every single little joke, funny or not. Why couldn't the compulsions get together and decide on a set personality, so that Nick wouldn't have to deal with Fate's odd quirks all the time? Sure, the compulsion had been the one to show the fledgling vampire around the Realm, but even Nick had his limits.
"She's promised to somebody else, isn't she?" Nick asked, his eyebrows raising pointedly. "A red-haired mortal, last I recall? At least, that's what Destiny told me last time she dropped by on the topic of Hermione Granger."
Fate clapped his manicured hands, immediately dismissive of any topics concerning his twin sister. "But of course! However, I am the controller of her fate, and Destiny…only fiddles around a bit. I could nip in if you wanted…"
"And both of you have several other people's fates and destinies in the balance, so don't risk something so great for little old me," Nick replied in his driest voice. "Anyway, I don't fancy brunettes in such a fashion. You just didn't mention that she was a Guide." He folded the paper carefully, his eyes accusative. "Kind of an important fact to leave out even when you're blathering on, isn't that?"
"Importance is in the eye of the beholder." Fate waved this off and trounced over to the table, plucking up several of the candied plums Nick had left out for a purpose. The compulsions could not turn down candied plums if their existence depended on it. Fate had probably smelled the confection from the other side of the cosmos. "I'm sorry that you had to fall for a mortal, though. Your fate isn't kind."
"I don't have one anymore, remember? It doesn't become the Undead." Nick's voice was once again bland. His eyes, however, were entirely too serious in their own right. He had not yet reached forty, but his eyes were those of an elder. "You know, for a thing that controls where most people end up, you have a terrible memory."
"Sue me. My mother was a Greek goddess. They're not known for their sensibility—remember Artemis? Hothead if I ever saw one…"
"I'm sure Orion agrees."
"Yes. Such a delicious morsel he was—too bad Artemis claimed him first…" Fate's eyes narrowed suddenly, and he regarded the vampire with a suspicious. "You're not still on about that ritual, are you? I told you it would happen, didn't I? Isn't that enough for you?"
The vampire sat up, his posture steely and his gaze determined. "I lost my mortality for that ruddy ritual, and all I get is that it will happen? Come, man—or compulsion, or whatever you feel like being today—even Irony's not that cruel! Surely you can tell me something!"
"Irony was always a bit of a wimp, now that I think about it…"
Nick's look told the compulsion that he was clearly not amused.
"Well, you can't blame me entirely! I did send you a Guide!"
"A clueless one! She may be quick and intelligent by mortal standards, but she next to nothing about whom would partake in the ritual! Oh, she could bore one to death with useless facts that I already knew, but what good does that do anybody? Who's the Initiator? The Brother? The Foe we know…"
"Only because his lifeline has been kept in the Realm," Fate hastened to point out. "Nicholas, there are certain things even I don't know, and I do not discriminate between Undead and mortal! Everybody comes through me!"
One of the positive sides of being a vampire was the ability to see through lies. "The Undead do not. Stop saying that. Instead of charging you rent in the Realm, we have you delete our files, remember? Of course, if you want to go back to the Old Ways, I'm sure we can start charging you rent again. I'm sure it wouldn't be too much trouble…but then, how many first-borns does a compulsion have?"
Fate managed to look contrite, a respectable feat considering his personality and ruthlessness. He made the bloodthirsty Blood Clan of the Transylvanian region look like generous charity workers. At least the Von Blüten clan was selective about who they allowed to join their ranks, Nick thought derisively as he looked down at his hands. They had once been callused and rugged, but now they did nothing but reflect his pallor.
The air changed as the contrite look disappeared among the smooth, tempered skin. "Heir to the Von Blüten Clan or not, you're a pretty crafty lad, aren't you?" Fate asked, his smile just a bit too wide. "You're really not in any position to make any decisions for the clan, are you?"
Nick was not fazed. "A few," he answered honestly. "The important ones. It won't be long before the head of the Von Blüten Clan either gets stabbed by his own wooden stake or just gives up the title to me. My first decision will involve compulsions and food."
Fate stopped, a handful of candied plums halfway to his partially open mouth. "You wouldn't!" he protested, eyes drawing into narrow slits.
There was nothing for Nick to do but raise a challenging eyebrow. "Would I?" A terribly uncharacteristic smile came from him, more suited for a cat's intelligent gaze than his own. "Trying my patience right now would not be the wisest course of action."
Instead of becoming annoyed at this, however, Fate did the unpredictable and broke out into a genuine grin. On his pointed, conniving features, the smile looked somewhat sinister. "My protégé has learned!" he cried happily, and clapped Nick on the shoulder. The young vampire jumped despite himself. "When you came here from the mortal lands, you knew nothing of the under-workings of magic and sarcasm! In less than two decades, I have taught you mastery!"
"There are hardly words to express my gratitude. Now, I know that you know something about the Six-Point Ritual that you're not telling me. Think carefully and remember those plums you're so happily stuffing down your trap."
Fate popped yet another candied plum into his mouth and chewed while he considered this. "Well," he said, drawing out the word, "I guess there might be a titbit of information I could share with my fledgling apprentice…"
Nick didn't bother to hide his eye-roll this time.
"I could, perhaps, find it within myself to share the identity of the Sleeper…"
"Perhaps?"
Little did either the compulsion or the vampire know that miles away in another realm, this very same topic was on the minds of two men. There was no comfortable setting with candied plums; no, this matter was spoken about in utmost secrecy. Not even a cricket would bother to chirp on such a conversation as the two men leaned forward over a parchment full of details. They each sat in silence for a long time, digesting the news that the parchment brought in his own separate way. One was sombre, the other scowling.
Sage Headmaster Albus Dumbledore looked up from the letter delivered expressly from Romania. His companion, Severus S. Snape, glanced up as well, although his eyes were dark. Neither said anything for a long moment, each still trapped in a different world of thought. Finally, Albus cleared his throat.
"It has begun in earnest."
*
A/N the Second: Yeah, this chapter kind of wrote itself. I hadn't really intended Hermione to meet any vampires, Nick created himself, and Fate just butted his way in. Proves me wrong for trying to write my own story! Plotline? What's that? Oh, dear, I suppose I might need one of those…Oh, yeah, if you want to see Fate in real life, watch Sweet Home Alabama. He's the gay guy in New York—the fashion designer whose name escapes me at the moment. I made the mistake of watching that and then writing a scene where Fate's character was open to debate.
Anyway, be a dear and review! Shout-outs go to Linda and Krishna for being so awesome!