Draco walked back into the pub, surveying the bustling lunch crowd and briefly wondered how upset the barkeep would be when he found out that Draco had let not one, but two vampires into his place of business without express permission.
The barkeep scared Draco. Just a little.
For example, the man who owned and also tended the bar had a name. Draco just didn't know it. Even without magic, the intimidation meter ran high with this bloke with his chin thrusts and grunts. Draco always got the feeling that if he didn't wait for the man's eye contact before speaking, his blood might end up all over the floor.
As the mid-day staff slung trays with bowls of food from the kitchen to the bar to the tables, neither the barkeep, nor the other two hangers on from earlier could be seen anywhere.
Draco silently thanked Salazar's snakes for the small favor of not having to make niceties with those blokes. He needed more coffee.
He also needed to piss after so many hours of waiting through the early morning for that woman and her minions to finish their business. He'd barely roused his poker buddies and shipped them off with coffee and coins, which took way longer than it should have, giving him a whole minute to pour himself a drink and compose himself for the eleven thirty Ministry meeting.
Which was one fucked up situation.
The barkeep's rules might as well have been carved into the skin of Draco's arm with all the finality he'd announced them. His staunch employer might overlook the breach of protocol with the woman that morning, but the prone form laying on the sofa in the back office was a different matter.
Hermione Granger wasn't fully turned, his experience told him just from looking at her. Quite a few Newlings had wandered in and out of this pub in that half-vampiric state. Most of them had expired within days. A few had fully turned, but none of them were like her.
He ducked moving trays and maneuvered behind the bar to cast a replenishing charm on the remains of the coffee. Then he filled his bourbon glass with ice and waited. Reheated coffee was a desperate man's drink. Iced coffee could at least pretend to be a hipster's defense. That's what all the trends pointed to these days, anyway.
Instead of being able to go home and sleep it off like his 'friends' had (and they didn't even have cake before they left), he was now stuck here, babysitting a half-turned vampire-witch-Newling who was internally processing his extra sleepy additive. For someone supposedly the brightest of her age, it was incomprehensible that she truly had no idea what had happened to her, or why.
Add that to the freaky cursed blood situation that the vampire woman's minions had gotten sick from, and he had himself a stew of trouble. What did that even mean? Couldn't they smell tainted blood when they got close? Draco's potion had set their systems straight, but they'd taken all of it.
And apparently, they hadn't learned their lesson, because that woman had placed an order for more. Much more.
Fortunately, he had the extra emergency stash to get him started… Ah, shite, Granger had gotten to that. He was going to need a hell of a lot of caffeine to start all over again. Sugar. And carbs. One day, he might be free to get what he really wanted out of life… if this life didn't kill him first.
But we can't all have what we want, can we?
Draco poured the replenished coffee over the tower of ice stacked in his glass and was about to lift it up to his mouth, but then he set it back down again and sighed heavily. Now he had another problem. He needed relief. In a big way.
He eyed the cooler that contained his cake and set off down the hall. Unfortunately, the loo queue spilled out of the alcove and wove around the back wall, so he went back to the bar, snatched up his drink and a slice of cake and retreated to the table in the corner to wait it out.
As Draco shoveled sugar and carbs into his mouth, the Daily Prophet headlines squirmed under his glass. He pushed aside the coffee, staring at the water ring surrounding big block letters he'd already read once that morning and couldn't help thinking that everyone had lost their damn minds.
HERMIONE GRANGER FIGHTS FOR ALL CREATURES, BIG AND SMALL
Now there was someone who had always gotten under his skin in the worst way. Hermione Granger had risen from Muggle obscurity to be the leading darling of the Wizarding World. Conversely, Draco had grown up attempting to stay one step ahead of the Killing Curse and faked his way through his Hogwarts years, fulfilling every dark command.
And what had that gotten him? Not a cushy Ministry job. Not accolades and awards. Certainly not the Wizarding World handing him everything he ever wanted on a silver platter.
While the Sacred Almost-Twenty-Remaining families ran screaming to the dark corners of the Wizarding World after their total defeat, they cursed the Malfoy name for being too weak to handle a little push-back. Meanwhile, the rest of the world shook Granger's mudblood hand and thanked her for her service.
She hadn't started out with any of his in-born advantages: immeasurable wealth, a bloodline to rival the Monarchy, and the highest expectations to achieve greatness (or die trying). But she'd made up for her inherent disadvantages in big ways.
Comparatively, he hadn't needed to go into hiding for a year because the Dark Lord was hunting him, so there was that.
But also, she drank blood now. That was totally unexpected. Must be a downer, having risen so high to fall so low.
Still, every time her name showed up in the papers, it cast an ugly lens on how everything he'd sacrificed had been for nothing.
And seriously, who the hell gave a flying fwooper about Cornish Pixies?
As the caffeine buzzed through his system and cleared the cobwebs from his head, a persistent pressure below his belt reminded him that his other business could no longer be delayed. Keeping his eye on the slow-moving loo queue, Draco weighed his options. The longer he put off mixing the next batch, the greater his chances were of someone else showing up and demanding a product that he didn't have.
That was a death sentence he could readily avoid.
Shuffling past the queue, Draco entered the back office and set up his equipment. Then he donned his potions robe (mostly to protect his clothes, because he was going to at least look legit to his clients). He opened a vein and waved his wand, siphoning a thin red trail through the air into the small bottles lined up on his desk. Draco was an expert at measuring out just the right amount to make his clients feel invincible without making them want to do naked cartwheels in the midday sun. The only thing worse than a hungry vampire was one that had gone insane.
Bottled up experiences. That's what Draco specialized in. It gave people an escape from their otherwise hellhole of an existence while also paying off his enormous debts.
Draco sealed his arm with a Healing Charm and capped the bottles, stowing them in a box under his desk. The samples needed to sit for a few hours before dilution and additives. And anyway, he couldn't stand the pressure any longer.
He had to go check the… his thoughts derailed as he caught sight of the lump of wild hair tangled around a Ministry robe, faintly rising and falling in the rhythm of a deep slumber. He stood there, staring at the new complication in his life.
Hermione Granger was one of those people who the karmic balance of the universe naturally shifted towards. Nothing unfortunate was supposed to happen to 'good people'. But when she stumbled into his pub like some injured, wild animal… alright, it wasn't his pub… but if anyone found a high-profile Ministry employee dead anywhere near him, his life would be over. Especially since they had sent her straight to him.
He couldn't allow her to expire in his presence. What did it matter if he'd taken all the money she had tied up inside her bra as payment and ended up passed out on his sofa, Draco checked his watch, for at least twenty more minutes?
She wasn't supposed to be his problem.
Except he'd fed her. And like leaving a bowl of cream out for a stray, he had practically guaranteed that he would see her again.
So what the hell was he going to do if… no, when the Ministry found out about his vampire cocktail potions? How much god-awful shite was going on out there if vampires were turning Ministry witches?
And what the fuck had he done to deserve this gigantic pile of shite being dumped in his lap?
The pressure built up even worse. If he didn't get relief soon, he was going to burst. Privacy. He needed privacy for this. Draco went back to the pub, banged on the locked loo door. When it didn't open, he couldn't wait any longer.
He plodded through his office, running his gaze over the near-dead form on his sofa, ignoring the lazy way that his furniture had been knocked around, too desperate to stop and fix the slightly off-center ottoman, and pushed through onto the back patio, heading for the far corner. He unzipped his fly and let it rip on the offensive potted plant, pissing like a horse into the dirt.
Fuck Hermione Granger.
A/N: If you are curious about this story and want to read further, the next few chapters are already up on fanfictalk dot net, under the same penname. Thanks for reading! Please drop your feelings in the box below. I try to answer all polite comments.