Disclaimer: Anything you recognize, chances are I don't own it.
Author Notes: This story is an AU, if you don't like it don't read it.
Pain, Chapter Two
Ash clogged Mynee's throat and as she tried to draw in a breath, she erupted into a coughing fit. The floor ride came to an abrupt and her knees connected with a stone hearth, her uncle's burnt corpse sliding in beside her.
She let out a soft cry and fell forward, barely catching herself on her hands, ripping the skin off them. There were several stunned gasps from the room she had flooed into and she, fear grasping her heart, lifted her eyes from the floor.
All of the professors who taught at Hogwarts were staring at her in complete shock. She whimpered quietly and looked at them with pain filled eyes. Dumbledore stood up at his desk, concern shining on his face.
"Ms. Granger are you all right?"
"They're dead, dead...Everyone one of them...He killed them...They're dead!" Her voice rose to a hysterical pitch towards the end and the blood trickling out of the puncture marks on her neck increased slightly.
She whimpered again, her chocolate brown hair falling around her face in a protective curtain.
"Who are dead Ms. Granger?"
"EVERYONE!" She screamed hysterically. Poppy Pomfrey leant forward in her chair, looking at the marks on her neck with interest.
"Dear, who is everyone? What on earth happened to your neck?"
Mynee mewled softly and drew her hand away, almost black blood covering her hand. She looked down at her hand then back up at the teachers, fear shining on her face. They all gasped quietly when the red blood turned all black and sluggish slid out of her torn flesh.
She cried out in terror then collapsed, her body over her uncle's burnt corpse. Poppy jumped up from her chair and quickly levitated her up to the Hospital Wing and the rest began to avidly discuss what to do about Hermione Granger.
Dumbledore looked down at Mynee, worry creasing his already wrinkled brow. What in Merlin's name was this brilliant witch doing bleeding freely from two puncture wounds in her neck and in full blown hysterics? Something awful must have happened; her uncle's corpse was enough proof of that.
The young witch was thankfully deeply unconscious as Poppy thoroughly checked her body for any life threatening cuts. What the medi- witch found deeply disturbed her. Hermione Granger's body bore signs of abuse and the way her eye was twitching it showed she was under a great mental strain. The older woman shook her head slowly and looked up at Dumbledore.
"Albus I fear she has suffered much trauma in a very short time. Only time will tell if Ms. Granger will heal fully. And maybe hopefully, someday, she'll tell one of us what came to pass. I am afraid Albus...I fear she is a...a..."
"What are you afraid of Poppy?" His face was kind as he looked at the obviously ruffled woman.
"I believe she was bitten by a Vampire. If this is so, she won't be able to attend school here anymore and her life will have turned upside-down..."
"I understand your concern Poppy, is there anything you can give to her now to kill off the Vampire blood cells?"
"There is no such treatment Albus...You know very well that if there was Ms. Granger would have been given it the moment she arrived in here. I don't want to loose her, she has so much promise." The medi-witch had something akin to motherly adoration in her sad liquid brown eyes that looked up at Dumbledore.
The elderly wizard sighed quietly and softly patted her shoulder. "The most you can do for her right now is just being here in case she wakes up. We had a Vampyre student a long time ago...I believe there is a few small bottles of blood in the back of your cupboards. If she truly has been bitten by a Vampire she will need to be given it immediately." The woman nodded slowly and quickly walked in the direction of her office.
Shewanted more then anything to help the girl she had looked upon as almost a surrogate daughter since she began spending more and more of her free time in the Hospital Wing, learning for her future career as a medi- witch. Poppy Pomfrey wished fervently that the worst was not a reality with the unconscious girl.
Mynee woke up in a room that was definitely not her own. The walls were white, sterile, and the faint scent of disinfectant was pungent in the air. Where were the comforting dark blue walls and nice clean smell of her room? There was only one place in the world that she knew of that smelt like this apart from a muggle doctor's office.
Suddenly, she was swamped with what had happened since the sun had set that very night. A noise akin to a sob escaped her throat and echoed malevolently in the empty room, bouncing of walls and coming at her from every direction like many bladed assassins waiting to crush out her tiny existence.
One hand was unconsciously drawn to her neck and she felt it. Those two little puncture marks right on her jugular, testimony to her now immortality. Mynee sucked in a lungful of air as she fought back the need to cry. This strange gift had been at the cost of her family. Sure, they were not good people, but they were her family and she had at least loved her parents.
She bit down hard on her bottom lip and she quickly sat up, her head resting on her knees. It hurt so much, the pain welling up in her heart, the agony trying to pierce her skin with its hateful daggers, eager to corrupt what small parts of her left untouched. She felt like her very soul was being changed, melted and being molded into something new and terrifying.
Then, real pain shot through her chest and a loud and very real cry escaped her lips and her eyes rolled back into her head. Her body hit the bed and Pomfrey came at a dead run, clasped tightly in her hand was the single dusty golden bottle that might save Hermione Anne Granger's very life. Mynee writhed about on the mattress; her eyes clenched shut in unspeakable agony.
Her mortal body was dying, but the immortal spirit that resides within every living creature, was reigning supreme, taking the soon to be deceased flesh and reanimated it to serve its own purposes.
One of her hands was clamped to her neck as if holding all of the black blood that was pounding through her veins in, the other pressing against her belly as if trying to ease particularly nasty cramps.
A single unearthly scream came from her thrashing body then she stilled the transformation complete. Poppy took several uneasy steps toward the bed bound girl, fear showing in the woman's eyes.
Had she just witnessed what she thought she had? As she was looking over at Hermione, her eyes opened. Where once warm cinnamon hues had sparkled, were eerie sea green with far, far too much predatory silver.
The tips of Mynee's mouth rose into a smirk as she fluidly rose into a sitting position, somehow facing Poppy. The medi-witch looked in horror at the girl then with the last bit of composure she had, proffered the blood filled bottle, the stopper out.
Mynee's suddenly overly sensitive nose caught the whiff of blood. Yes, it was very old blood, but still the life giving ambrosia that would restore feeling to her limbs and make the awful pounding in her head disappear.
With a shaking hand, she took the bottle from the woman and downed its contents in a single deep gulp. Almost immediately Mynee felt the affects of the blood racing down her blood stream, it alien among the black tar like substance that would soon suck the nutrients from the heady crimson liquid.
She let out a quiet sigh and eased herself back onto the pillows resting behind her. She turned once again cinnamon eyes up to the trembling medi-witch, profound gratitude in those depths.
"Thank you so much..." Mynee's voice was trembling noticeably, but Poppy reached out and touched her cheek softly with her knuckles.
"You need not thank me Hermione. Sleep child, Professor Dumbledore will speak to you in the morning." Mynee mumbled quietly, the sweet elixir flooding her veins already lulling her to sleep.
Just before Madame Pomfrey crept away, she brushed her fingers across the girl's forehead, murmuring quietly. "If you are even here in the morning..." The woman sighed quietly, a sigh heaved far to much in those troubled times, and left her domain to go have a long 'chat' with the Headmaster.
Your Lord and Master;
Foamy the Squirrel