A/N: Alright-o, here's the last chapter I'm going to be churning out in a long while. I'm putting this fic on hold for the time being, until around mid- to late-November when my O Levels are over. I won't be completely on hiatus though. There may be an occasional poem or vignette if inspiration chooses to strike. Until then, adios for now :)

Chapter 14: Realisations

"Mr Malfoy informs me that you have neither been sleeping nor eating for two days now, Miss Granger."

"Did he, now?"

He leant against the doorframe, backlit against the light from the common room. "Tell me, what do you seek to achieve by sequestering yourself away in your room?"

"I merely wish to be alone."

"And wallow in your self-pity? How typical of Gryffindors."

She glanced at him dully, and saw that he was still dressed in his Death Eater garb. "So, was it them?"

"Yes."

"And the Headmaster has no knowledge of this."

"I will notify him shortly, but I thought you have the right to learn of the facts first."

She remained silent, and he realised she was not going to prompt him. "Three days before you birthday, the Dark Lord somehow learned of the fact that we have been meeting outside curriculum time on a daily basis. I explained to him that you had taken an interest in the Dark Arts and came to me, so I took you under my tutelage. He has ordered me to gain your trust and introduce you into the Inner Circle."

"He thinks I'll be instrumental in bringing Harry to him."

He inclined his head at her flat statement.

"And my parents?"

"He hopes to leave you emotionally vulnerable so as to aid me in carrying on in my task of turning you to his side. I was excluded in the summons as he thought it may seem suspicious if I were to be absent from school at the approximate time your parents met their end."

"I see."

He tried to gauge her reaction, but with her face half- hidden in darkness, there wasn't much he could detect. And the little he could see worried him. "The world does not revolve around you alone, Miss Granger," he said sharply. "We are here to play a part, in some hope that it may change the outcome a little bit. If you are going to turn into a dishrag, do so and get it out of your system." Withdrawing a package from his robes, he placed it on her desk. "Take this as a late birthday gift if you are so inclined to. I shall be very disappointed if you do not turn up at dinner. Training resumes tonight."

Spinning on his heel, he closed the door behind him, leaving her in darkness.

Draco Malfoy stood up from the couch. "Sir? Is she okay?" he asked anxiously

He spared a glance over his shoulder at the closed door. "She will be. Good day, Draco."

He prayed his bluff will work.

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Draco leapt to his feet for the second time that day when the sounds of a door opening reached his ears.

Hermione emerged from her room, looking none the worse for her self-imposed isolation. Her hair was tucked into a neat braid, her uniform had nary a wrinkle, and her eyes were bright.

In short, she looked like the Hermione he knew.

A surge of relief suffused his entire being. "It's almost dinnertime. Are you hungry?"

"A little." She smiled gently at him. "I'm sorry if I scared you three. I was just overwhelmed, that's all."

"Okay." He blew his breath out, trying to get the nerve to ask. "Are you alright?"

"Not quite. But I will be."

He nodded. "Well, that's good, I think."

They both looked up at the sound of the dinner bell. "Let's go. I want to see Harry and Ron."

He felt a brief flash of something he couldn't quite identify at her words, and she must have seen it, for she gave his hand a squeeze as they descended the steps from the tower. "Thanks...for caring."

To his great humiliation, he felt his cheeks grow hot, and he knew he was blushing. "Welcome," he managed gruffly at her knowing smile. "I...I have to go now."

And with that, he took off as fast as he could, trying desperately to conceal his face, which he reckoned was nearly the same shade as Ron's hair already.

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It took him a few days to realise it: she was not the same girl he knew anymore.

On the surface, she appeared unchanged, joking and laughing with her friends as usual. But on closer inspection, that illusion was shattered. The changes were subtle, and he would have missed them if not for the training ingrained in him to notice even the smallest details.

The light in her eyes was keen and sharp, not at all the soft sparkle of intelligence that usually filled them; it reminded him of a wizarding picture of a jaguar stalking its prey She held herself differently, her posture more confident. Her gait was deliberately slow and measured, like a hunter who knew he had all the time in the world and his prey did not.

The new intensity about her both scared and enthralled him, seeing the metamorphosis his friend had undergone. Gone was the bookish schoolgirl they all knew. This was a warrior looking for revenge.

Oh boy, the jerks who did her parents in were really in for it this time.

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"Is it just me this time, or has Hermione...changed somehow?" Harry whispered at a study session four days after the girl in question had emerged from her room. She was, at the present, still at her nightly training sessions. They all noticed that she had taken to staying down at the dungeons out late these days.

Draco looked up from his Charms essay, eyebrows raised. "You saw?"

"Have you? When?"

"Just yesterday night."

Meanwhile, Ron had been looking between the two of them, the bewildered expression on his face growing with every word of their stilted conversation.

They ignored him. "Rather reminds you of a dangerous animal, doesn't she?"

"Quite." Draco smiled. "I thought you'd never realise."

"What in the name of Merlin are you two talking about?" demanded a thoroughly mystified Ron loudly.

"Just because you are too thick to see certain things doesn't mean the rest of the wizarding population is just as myopic too, Ron," drawled Draco

He made a rude noise through his nose as he pulled his Potions textbook. "Since there are people like you around who think they are so observant, surely I can rely on them to keep me up-to-date, can't I?"

"You think so?"

"I know so."

"Well then, you are mistaken."

"Stop it, you two," ordered Harry, grinning. "Just because you don't have Hermione to nag at you these days doesn't mean you can have a go at our dear Slytherin here." He turned to Draco, the smile disappearing. "She's on the warpath now, isn't she?"

"It would be logical to assume so," he agreed thoughtfully. "I found her in her room throwing knives at a target board, and the look in her eyes..." He shuddered involuntarily. "It was...I don't know, all intense and predatory and...fierce. She was never like that before this, not even when she began training with Snape."

"You can't blame her." Both boys looked at Ron, who was looking unusually pensive. "Becoming the Slayer...it has somehow unleashed something in her, don't you see? A sort of a vicious persona. A fighter's spirit, if you will. And her parents dying, I think it allowed that part of her closer to the surface than it ever was." He paused, and then noticed the openmouthed stare Draco was giving him. "What?"

"Good grief, Weasley, I never knew you could ever be that perceptive." He raised his hands and eyes upwards, in a parody of gratitude. "Ye Gods."

Ron tossed his quill at him, which didn't really work, since the feather flopped onto the table midway. "Oaf," he growled half-seriously.

"Not at all," came the lofty reply. "We of the noble and ancient house of Malfoy are never oafs—"

Harry handed him a cushion he had Summoned from the couch, and they both cut the lecture off with a thorough battering.

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Hermione tried to keep up with her Watcher as the large basket he had handed her swung from her arm. "Professor, what are we looking for, really?"

"Black nightshade."

She frowned, dredging facts about the herb from the depths of her memory. "That's a poisonous plant sir!"

"Not with the correct handling," he answered with a bite of impatience in his voice.

She looked to the line of trees they seemed to be heading for. "And there's black nightshade in the Forbidden Forest?"

"That has to be the most brilliant of deductions you have ever made in your career so far, Miss Granger. Do I have to award any points to Gryffindor?"

She rolled her eyes, knowing that he wouldn't see it in the darkness. His barbs at Gryffindor were getting tiresome, and—if one may be so bold—childish. "Not at all, Professor. I just might die of shock."

"Impetuousness gets you nowhere, Miss Granger."

She chose to ignore that. "What about the centaurs? Won't they harm us?"

"Dumbledore has placated them, you needn't worry your overachieving brain about that."

"There are some who think overachieving is a good thing, you know."

"That would be a matter of opinion, I believe."

"Precisely so. Therefore, if that was supposed to be an insult, I'm quite sorry to say I did not see it as such."

"Do be a little louder, Miss Granger. I'm sure not all the occupants of the castle have been awakened by your incessant chatter yet."

She bit her lip to keep the outcoming retort in. Honestly. That man was completely infuriating. Just as she was beginning to have a proper conversation with him, he had to go kill the mood with a well-placed verbal spear or two. She didn't deign to speak after that.

They stopped a couple paces away from the line of trees. "Take your wand out," he ordered. "There are many creatures residing here which may wish us harm."

Vampire bats perhaps? a voice muttered in her head sardonically. Mentally giggling at the jibe at her present company, she withdrew her wand, making sure that the basket was positioned so that it would not get in her way when she needed to cast a spell in a hurry.

The skin on the back of her neck prickled as she crossed the threshold of the forest. The trees seemed to whisper of things she couldn't hear, emanating a sense of danger and malevolence.

"Keep an eye out." Snape's quiet reminder made her jump. "Two eyes, in fact. One can never be too careful."

Resisting the urge to tell him how much he sounded like Mad-Eye Moody, she simply nodded and continued walking, eyes straining to see the forest floor in the faint light from their wands.

The air under the trees was close and warm, and soon, sweat beaded her brow and trickled down her back. She wondered how Snape could stand the heat in his layers of clothing.

"Wait," he said suddenly, halting before a tree with thick knobbly roots. She stopped and watched him kneel down, bringing his wand down to the little plants that grew between the roots.

It was, by far, the ugliest plant she had seen. Dull green leaves on skinny stalks, heavy with little bunches of white flowers. Withdrawing a knife from his robes, Snape began cutting. "Hand me the basket."

Setting down the basket beside him, she held her wand aloft, lending him slightly better light to see with. Neither spoke, attention focused on the little clump of nightshade.

The crack of a branch was all the warning they had.

Two snarling things launched themselves at them, knocking them over. Hermione screamed as her head hit the tree trunk, and for a moment, she saw stars.

Before she could do anything, the thing was yanked off her, and Snape pulled her to her feet. "Vampires," he said calmly.

Following his line of sight, she saw not just two, but four humanoid beings climbing to their feet, growling angrily. Even from where she stood, the stink of decaying flesh was palpable. "You don't happen to have a stake with you, do you, sir?"

"No. But you forget, we are in a forest."

"Ah yes, how silly of me."

The vampires circled them warily, slavering. Snape spoke without taking his eyes off them, "I didn't mean to let you go into the practical so soon, but it appears that the decision has been taken out of my hands."

"That's all right." Training her wand at one of the creatures, she whispered a few well-chosen words, and it—that was no way she could think of it as a 'he'—went up spectacularly in a pillar of flames. Snape took care of another in the same way.

The remaining two charged at them, and both tucked away their wands, as it was damn near impossible to hex a moving target and neither wanted to miss and risk setting the entire forest on fire.

A quick flick of her wrists and a pair of knife-hilts slid smoothly into her palms. Twirling them into position, she slashed at the one who came for her. In life, it had been a woman, maybe in her late forties. It was kind of hard to tell, with the ridges and fangs of its vampiric nature.

It fell back and swiped at the gash in its arm, shrieking in a voice loud enough to wake the dead—that is, if they weren't already awake. Glaring at her with glowing yellow eyes, it charged again.

A forehand strike, a lightning-fast spin behind the adversary, and another backhand cut, like she had been taught, and the vampire exploded into dust.

"I thought decapitation involved the complete severing of the head from the neck?"

"I see even a fight fails to distract your monstrous intellect, Miss Granger." She made a face at his customary snarkiness as he came over to where she stood, looking down at the scattered brick-red dust that was her opponent. "As long as the spinal cord is separated from the rest of the body, it qualifies as legitimate decapitation."

"I see." Picking the blades of her knives off on a leaf from the ground, she tucked them into her pocket.

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She entered to the tune of three roughhousing boys, and stopped, amused at the sight of three very rumpled boys looking up at her.

"Blimey, Hermione, did a Hippogriff trample all over you or what?"

"I wonder what made you think so," she told Ron, massaging the sore spot on the back of her head where had hit the tree trunk. "Professor Snape and I encountered four vampires in the Forbidden Forest. We hexed two and got rid of the others the old-fashioned way."

"Wicked! Was it fun?"

She grinned. "Quite. It was interesting seeing how it disintegrated into dust after I decapitated it." Taking out the knives, she pushed back her sleeves and replaced them in the harnesses strapped to her forearms.

"Where did you get those?" Harry leaned forward to get a better look.

"Professor Snape. He said I could consider it a birthday gift of sorts." She pointed to the springs. "See that? It's rigged to push the weapon up into my hand when I twist my wrist."

"Cool!"

She couldn't help but laugh at their enthusiasm. "Now if you'd excuse me, I would like to take a shower before I stink the lot of you to death."

They looked at each other the moment the door clicked shut. "Did you see that?" asked Draco. "The way her eyes looked, how she reacted when we asked her about the weapon harnesses and everything?"

"Yeah.," Harry chewed on the tip of his quill, lost in thought.

Ron just frowned at the closed door.

A/N: Well, here's the much-requested fight-with-a-vampire scene. Hope I wrote it convincingly. Do tell me what you think okay?

montaquilladecacahuate: here's the requisite scene, hope you like :)

Natsuyori: Thanks! Hope I wrote this chapter to your liking too!

FanFictionDreamer: Thank you for being so understanding!