Author's Note: Chapter 3! Man am I excited. Are you? Please be reviewing. :) I need it. Maybe the characters are OOC but... I mean. It's post books and the plot is a bit different so it's hard not to make them all OOC. Soooo oops. Lol. Try to enjoy it anyways! AND REVIEW PLLEEEEASE. :D
Chapter 3
Hermione had never seen anyone as beautiful as the girl standing in front of her, and what's more, she had no idea who or WHAT the girl was. She was tall, with dark brown hair, almost black, and had on what looked like monk's clothing. Her hair swept around her face and framed her marble skin. Everything about her was breathtaking. She smiled at her teeth sparkled in the glow of Hermione's wand. The only thing that really frightened the witch was the color of the other woman's eyes- they were a bright crimson red.
The girl asked Hermione, "What are you?" and Hermione stiffened.
"An Auror. Now you." She took a step forward. She wasn't afraid of the girl with the red eyes. She had fought a war with Ron and Harry, and she wasn't about to be intimidated by a creature in a forest in Devon.
"Hungry," the girl said. Then she lept, straight up, moving so fast that the witch's eyes lost her instantly.
"Honestly," Hermione said and spun around, looking for a trace of the girl. "It's considered rude to dissapear mid conversation."
"I'm still here," the voice replied, from somewhere high above her. "Don't worry."
"Proper social rule says that you stand within sight of a person when speaking to them," the witch responded. "You're being incredibly improper."
The girl dropped again, this time directly behind Hermione. "Excuse me," she spoke in a tone that dripped honey. "Let me introduce myself. I'm Bella Swan."
Hermione could feel Bella's presense, maybe inches behind her. She didn't turn. She knew at least a dozen spells to use on a boggart. At least a dozen to use on a troll. At least twenty to use on a rogue pixie. But she couldn't come up with a single one to use now. "Hermione Granger," she muttered, her tone much less definate that it had been only moments before.
"You smell like honey suckles Hermione Granger," Bella Swan said and then appeared in front of her, about five foot away. "Did you know that? You have the most delicious scent.."
The witch licked her lips and lowered her wand. "How did you do that? Can you apparate?"
"Apparate?" Bella shook her head. "I'm just fast." She dissapeared and then reappared to Hermione's left, then her right, then inches in front of her. "Much faster than you."
Hermione racked her brain for an explanation. She'd read about a thousand dangerous and magical creatures all around England. Nothing could move like this. Nothing looked so human or... She swallowed. Perhaps she should alert Harry.
"Are you a witch?" Hermione asked then, wondering if she was using some sort of charm to disguise herself long enough to appear as if was vanishing into thin air and reappearing only feet away.
Bella shook her head, and then reached out, touched Hermione's cheek with the back of her hand. "Oh no, not a witch." Then she took deep breath, and her pupils almost seemed to widen as she breathed. "You are absolutely intoxicating. And I'm sorry but I'm having trouble resisting the urge..." She stepped back and Hermione could see that she'd crossed the clearing and appeared twenty-five feet away in half a second.
The witch swallowed her pride, and lifted her wand. "Alertus maginum!" she shouted and sparks shot off into the sky. Then she flicked her wand again. "Immobilus!"
Bella stood perfectly still and for a second, Hermione felt relief. Then the other girl stepped forward, slowly, one foot gracefully placed in front of the other. "I don't think that works on me," she said, amusement painting her tone. "Try again."
Hermione's eyebrows furrowed. "Immobilus!" she shouted again. Nothing. "Petrificus Totalus!" Bella continued to walk closer. "Rictusempra!" That was one even she hated to use, and hadn't actually until this moment. But it didn't matter- Bella reached her in an instant.
The girl had her on her back in the dirt within seconds, her hands so tight around Hermione's wrists that she lost grip of her wand and it rolled into a pile of pine needles nearby.
"I wish you know how absolutely delicious you smelled right now," she said, and bent her face to the witch's throat. "If you did, you wouldn't blame me." She put her lips to the pale skin there, letting them slide from her jaw to her ear and back down, to the stretch of her throat above Hermione's collar bone. Bella knew that the second she broke skin, it would the end for the girl. She would drain her dry in mere seconds.
A boy's voice came rolling through the darkness then, "Expelliarmus!" he shouted.
"She's not a witch, Harry!" Hermione managed. "Something..." Bella's mouth opened the the flat edge of her font teeth pressed into the skin of throat. "..else."
Harry cleared his throat. "Expecto Patronum!" he bellowed. An illuminated stag appeared in the cleared and came galloping towards the two girls laying on the forest floor. It kicked it's hooves at Bella's back and Bella let go of Hermione to round on the thing. But it dissapated and reappared to her left, knocked her down. Hermione clambered to her feet, her heart beating so hard that it was in her throat.
"You can't use spells directly on her," she told Harry hurriedly, "Because she's deflecting them somehow!" Hermione touched her neck tentatively. She could still feel the other girls teeth skating across her skin. It made her sort of woozy. She tried to desperately to sort through her thoughts and come up with a spell to cast that would help Harry's stag bring her down. But she couldn't even get to her wand. It was still glowing, from somewhere in the pine needles, but in the hustle and bustle of the fight, she couldn't get to it.
Bella lept at Harry, and he jumped back, waved his wand again, brought the Patronus directly between the two of them. Just then two men burst through the clearing. Both in the same outfit as Bella Swan. Instantly, the had her, one holding one arm, and the other holding her other arm.
She struggled to get away. A low growl escaped her lips. It made the hair on Hermione's arms stand up.
"We're very sorry," one of the men said, his face covered in a thick red beard. He sounded strained trying to hold the girl back. "She's undergoing therapy."
Harry ended the Patronus charm and stood with his wand out, still on guard. Hermione managed to finally scoop up her wand, holding it tightly in her hand. Her nerves were shot. "Therapy!" she shot back at the man, "What in Merlin's name is she in therapy for!?"
The other man, sans beard, his arms not as muscular as his companions, took notice of Harry and Hermione's wands. "You two must be Aurors. I notice the pins on your shirts. And so it's okay if we tell you. Bella Swan is a recently transformed vampire. She lives with us in a sanctuary near here. You're the first humans that she's come in contact with since her admission into the sanctuary." He tightened his grip on Bella's arm and yanked her towards him a bit. The other man did the same. "We really are very sorry for her outbreak."
"Outbreak!" Harry shouted. "She could have bloody well taken off my friends head!"
"Taken off her head?" The man with the beard cleared his throat. "She probably would have just fed on her. Nothing as rash as all that." He and his partner turned then and began escorting Bella back the way they had just came.
Once they were gone, Harry turned to Hermione. He approached her and looked at her neck and her wrists. There were no distinguishing marks on her neck, but her wrests were red and bruises were beginning to form. "Shit," he said, "She must have had one hell of a grip."
Hermione was still stunned. She flicked her wand and let the light reduce to just a small illumination at the tip of her wand. "I thought I was dead for a moment," she said to him. "Honestly, I was a little worried." She thought once more of squirming beneath the vampire's body, as the girl's teeth slid along the pale skin of her throat. She could have bit her any time in the minute before Harry arrived, but she just played with her, toyed with her. Thinking about it made Hermione's stomach twist.
"Wanna call it a night?" Harry asked her, gingerly holding one of her wrists in his open palm. "We can come back tomorrow, how about that?"
Hermione nodded. She was much too riled up to focus on their mission. She waved to him. "After you then," she said.
He waved his wand and he was gone, apparated back to the courtyard outside of the ministry. Hermione quickly followed his lead.
XXX
Hermione and Harry returned the next day and found the boggart lounging on the trunk of a fallen tree. Hermione stood in front of it and it swiftly turned into Bella Swan, as she knew it would. She couldn't get the vampire out of her mind. She had barely been able to think about anything the past night due to her preoccupation with replaying her neardeath. The boggart stood straight and smiled at her. Hermione shivered and yelled in a clear voice, "Ridikulus!" Harry held out the empty backpack he had on his back, and the boggart deflated, landing hard in it, stunned just long enough for Harry to zip the thing back up and throw it back over his shoulder.
"That vampire did a real number on you, yeah?" He asked, the backpack moving on his back, the boggart within fighting to get back out. "Was it that bad?"
Hermione pursed her lips. "No. Of course not. I'm fine." But there was no use arguing with the proof of a transformed boggart. "You head on back. I'll be there shortly. I just need to collect my thoughts."
Harry gave her a funny look and then took out his wand. "Alright 'Mione, be careful." And with that he was gone.
Hermione fingured the little Auror pin stuck to the front of her jacket. She was an auror. It was absolutely ridiculous for her to be afraid of a vampire. She could take on dragons! Just because she had been caught off guard by one vampire did not mean she had to focus on it forever. She let her fingers slide across her collarbone. She thought again of how Bella Swan's lips had touched her neck. Since she'd broken up with Ronald Weasley almost a year ago, no one had touched her in any way resembling sensual. And come to mention, even with Ron, she hadn't gotten into a situation like the one she'd been in the night before. With Ron, all they had done was kiss a few times. It hadn't been anything to revel in anyways. She'd actually been relieved when he'd ended it; her heart just wasn't in it.
So it was absoultely inapropriate for the vampire girl to touch her in that way, regardless if was merely to feed upon her. What did that even mean? Vampires were not something wizards often studied about. She knew of their existence of course- everyone did. But no one had actually met a vampire and had admitted it. Vampire were absoultely secretive creatures, often with enough manners to avoid pinning girls such as Hermione to the floor of a forest. She narrowed her eyes. She wasn't going to let that girl, vampire or not, get away with what she did. She decided that she would find the sanctuary and confont her about it. Perhaps now that it was day, the girl would be in a better mood to talk.
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