Chapter Text
Astoria
Astoria and Pansy were staying in the manor for the foreseeable future, so they made themselves at home, which included the dungeons. Draco firmly believed that everyone should be calm around the vampire, but no one else followed that rule.
It was a good day. The pain never stopped, but it was minimal. She didn’t need her cane. Astoria made herself tea and heated more water than she needed so that she could bring some to whoever was on guard duty. Always one for daily opulence, Astoria arranged one of Narcissa’s tea sets on a tray with sugar and cream.
“Good morning,” Astoria said cheerily. She floated her serving tray to the ground and Ron helped himself to a pour of tea. Theo barely looked up. He was surrounded by a mess of metal bits and pieces.
Black eyes stared at Astoria from the other side of the cage. “Morning Granger.”
The vampire stayed close to the bars, watching Theo’s wand flick back and forth. Theo appeared to be manufacturing metal cuffs on the dungeon floor.
Granger looked better than she ever had since she turned. They’d been experimenting with different kinds of blood, and something about mixing different kinds of blood was calming her down. She didn’t need to eat as often, and she seemed like she was waking up to the world.
She was still a woman gone mad, but there was less panic, unless something set her off. She seemed to care more about cleanliness now, and Pansy even managed to get her to brush her hair.
Ron kept a slant eye on the vampire but was clearly distracted by Theo’s work.
Theo swore under his breath.
“What are we working on?” Astoria asked.
“Tracking cuff,” Ron answered for Theo.
Theo let out a particularly loud swear and the vampire flinched, but didn’t flee.
Pansy came in soon after, still in her robe. She gave Astoria a kiss on the top of the head, before settling on the ground next to her and helping herself to tea.
“How are you awake right now?” Pansy asked Ron.
Ron did look quite disheveled. More than usual. “Can’t sleep after raids. I figured I might as well do something useful.”
They all watched Theo tinker with the cuffs.
“Hold this,” Theo told Pansy. She reluctantly held the metal disk she was handed.
Theo put one of the cuffs on the floor, a small distance from them, and put it on the ground, across a chalk line on the ground.
The cuff slide against the stone floor and then stopped. Apparently, that was not the intended action because Theo looked he wanted to murder it.
Draco walked into everyone sitting on the floor, drinking tea. He looked like he wanted to start a fight but gave up when he saw how calm the vampire was. Resigned to the reality that he was wrong, he poured himself a cup and joined everyone on the floor, wincing as he did so.
Astoria opened her mouth to scold him for how terrible he looked. He was supposed to be taking over guard duty, but he looked like he barely slept either, dark circles poking through his pale skin. And he was injured somewhere.
Draco shot her a look that silenced anything she would have said about it, but she made her displeasure about it known. That man was going to get himself killed one of these days with how little he cared for his own safety. At least his eyes were bright.
“Any progress?” Draco asked Theo.
Theo huffed. “None. We might even have made negative progress.”
Apparently, the cuff was supposed to spring back to the disk when it crossed the threshold. It was supposed to be strong enough to pull a vampire back. It was rigged like a shock cuff, but with an advanced mechanism.
“I had high hopes for you,” Draco said.
“Do you know is a fantastic engineer? Blaise!” Theo said.
“We’re not telling him.”
“Why not?”
“Because we can’t trust him.”
No one else felt that way, but neither was anyone willing to push him on the matter. Blaise went behind his back to get promoted at the Ministry. Draco had every right to be mad at him.
“Hermione trusted him.” All of the Slytherins stared at Ron, and he shrunk under their gaze. He looked rather like he’d said something he shouldn’t have without knowing it.
Pansy recovered from the shock first. “They knew each other?”
“I thought everyone knew that he supplied the vampire corpses to her,” Ron said.
“That wasn’t common knowledge. No,” Pansy said.
“Look. I don’t know him, but he knew what she was doing, and she trusted almost no one with it. And she trusted him.”
“Do you know who else she told?” Draco asked.
“Harry and I, Ginny and Blaise.”
“Granger trusted him with something completely legal, though stupid. Not with this,” Draco said.
“It would be so much easier if he knew,” Pansy said.
“It might be, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right choice. He’s in the Ministry’s pockets. The only thing that I know for sure is that he’ll want to put an end to it before it can ruin his precious reputation.”
Pansy’s eyes met hers, but she dropped it. There was no hope of changing his mind when he dug his heels in like this. They’d have the conversation again. Just not now, when everyone was tired and temperamental.
Theo threw his hands up in frustration.
“Granger,” Theo said. “You’re the smart one. How do I do this?” The vampire blinked at him. “Great insight. Thank you.”
Draco
Draco sat on stone floor and tapped his fingers against his wand, tucked neatly away in its holster. He knew that the vampire could feel how tense he was. Draco didn’t know who to be mad at. He hadn’t trusted Blaise in so long; it shouldn’t have surprised him that he kept another secret, but it hurt all the same. Granger’s friends didn’t owe him anything. Granger was gone.
Potter knew that he was irritated, but thankfully didn’t bother to ask why. He looked just as tired and wrung out.
But no matter how far Blaise had fallen in Draco’s graces, Draco knew that Blaise would ever set a vampire on someone. Either Granger had secrets of her own, or she didn’t know that someone was after her. He could confront Blaise hoping that he’d know something.
Draco didn’t feel ready for it. His pride couldn’t take much more. It was enough having to answer to him professionally. He didn’t want to go crawling to him for information that he may or may not have. And he felt in his bones, that Blaise would want Granger gone. She would be a problem he didn’t want.
From reading her notes, it was clear that Granger was a complex woman. She worked herself until her notes became incoherent. She dug into a problem until she solved it. Insecurity plagued her, even though she must have known how much smarter she was than everyone else. She seemed the type to argue for the fun of it. Everything Draco read only made him more curious about her, and he wished that he had known this before she was already gone. She seemed like the kind of person he might have enjoyed talking to.
Not that knowing would have made a difference. He couldn’t have waltzed into her office and told her that they both liked reading Dickens and that they should discuss the books. She was still the Golden Girl, and he was only good enough to be monster fodder.
They were only tied together as it was through the most tenuous of circumstances. He was her unwanted jailor and she his unruly house guest.
The calm of the morning was long gone. A predatory gaze had settled over Granger’s features, and she kept her eyes trained on Potter. Occasionally, she sniffed the air.
Thanks to the raid, they almost had all of the potion ingredients. They were perhaps a week out from brewing, and then it would be up to fate. Draco could wait that long to confront Blaise.
Draco was trying to be content with the little bits of knowledge they’d gained. But he was not an easily satisfied person.
Draco felt in his bones that Granger needed human blood. But he also knew that giving her that would make it stronger, and she was barely contained as it was.
Even now, she looked like she was ready to spring out. There was something wrong with Granger’s eyes. They were dilated to pinpoints, like she was about to feed.
“Potter. Are you bleeding anywhere?” Draco said.
“The wound dried.”
That didn’t seem to matter. Hermione threw herself at the bars, reaching for Potter. Potter scrambled away, inches from her fingers, moments from being pulled to her.
“Leave,” Draco said. He had his wand at the ready, daring Granger to come through the bars.
Potter was clearly trying to recover. “Should I send...”
“I’ve got it.”
Even Potter leaving didn’t stop Granger from trying to attack. The vampire was in a frenzy, driven mad by the scent of blood. She flung her body against unforgiving metal again and again. The bars were bloody from where her skin had opened. Not the bright red of a human’s but dark, nearly black.
Draco had no patience for this now. He wanted to get mad, to fling himself at the bars in frustration. Instead, he forced himself to calm down and to take a deep breath.
“Hey, Granger,” Draco crooned. “Stop.”
She kept bashing.
Draco smacked his palms against the bars, hard enough to rattle them. The noise was enough to startle her.
“Stop that.” Like he was scolding her.
To his relief, Hermione stopped and looked at him. But now that he had the full attention of the vampire, he didn’t know what to do with it.
Vampire and human took each other in, neither moving. Draco was struck with the feeling that if he did something wrong, she’d start up the frenzy again.
“Theo said that he talks to you, and you pay attention to him. That you’re listening. And even though I feel absolutely ridiculous.”
The vampire relaxed out of her crouching position.
“Your potion is almost done. It would have been nice if would have thought about how difficult it would be to obtain some of those ingredients.”
He summoned one of the bottles of blood they kept on hand, while he kept talking, hoping animal blood would suffice. Draco told her how they got each and every ingredient, because it was something to talk about. Something to keep her from bashing herself against the bars.
She calmed a little bit after she fed, though the look in her eyes remained feral. It seemed that it was only the cadence of his voice keeping her instinct at bay. Potter’s blood had sent her mind somewhere else.
He ran out of ingredients to talk about eventually, but the vampire looked like she was waiting for something. So, he kept talking.
“I’m sorry that I never got the chance to apologize to you, for all of the things that happened when we were kids. I wish I’d known better then.”
Hermione cocked her head, like she was paying attention, so Draco continued.
“I should never have called you a mudblood. I thought that it made me superior, back then. Not that you need me to tell you that. Obviously, you’re capable and smart and worth a thousand of me.”
He told her all of the things he wished he’d told her before, that he never could. He talked almost all day, and the vampire listened.