Wilted Celandine

Chapter Six

First person, Hermione's POV

It was Hogsmeade weekend. Fortunately, that meant a lot of work for me. I was busy all the time, constantly preparing and doing last-minute studying, as well as arranging a project for my newly-formed club, H.U.F.F (Historically Unordinary Flamel Followers).

I split the club into three groups, each of which had a quest. One group would walk all around Hogsmeade and put blue tags at all the places Flamel visited in his day (yes, he had visited some places in Hogsmeade, believe it or not). The second group's job was to put flyers all around Hogsmeade, promoting our club (those who wanted to sign up would come and submit their information to me at the Three Broomsticks). And the third group, the smallest one, was supposed to set up a booth by Zonko's Joke Shop and sell books by or about Nicholas Flamel. All in all, it was wonderful, but very tiring.

After a few hours, quite a disappointingly small amount of people had signed up for the club (only 7 people added to the list to make the club number 17, not including myself). Nevertheless, I was exhausted, and Prefect duties called, so I summoned up my right-hand-woman--Hannah Abott--to take my place. After stopping at Zonko's to check on the club booth and have a chat with Ron and Harry, I decided to go for a walk.

Hogsmeade was always full of people, and although people were moving back in forth from shop to shop, streets were always filled. Usually I liked the hustle-bustle, but today the satisfied yet frenzied mood of my fellow students did not make me content. I felt like, as Bilbo of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (a very famed and talented wizard) had said, 'butter that has been spread on too much bread.' Exhausted, irritable, and sluggish, I wasn't even happy at finding a little dirt road that led away from Hogsmeade.

I had no excuse to be walking away from Hogsmeade, but I was sure a short ten-minute walk would do no harm. I had just stopped to lean against an oak tree and gather my thoughts when I heard a short yell from behind me. What on earth...? Why do these things always happen to me? Why do I have to be part of people's adventures? I'd love to have one day where I'm not busy and nothing abnormal happens, I thought.

Sitting up, I started walking towards the yell. I tried to fight down my nervousness. It was just a yell. Not very loud or pained-sounding. Perhaps someone had simply tripped on a tree root? My frantically beating heart denied my mind's insistent calm, and against my attempts to think logically, ideas spun in my head and I began to jog towards the sound of a second yell, this one cut off suddenly...

I fell to the ground as, in my hurry, I barely missed being whacked by a tree branch. Looking to my right, I saw a young girl of about twelve lying on the ground. She was barely conscious, and blood dripped from her neck. Leaning over her, breathing hard from the run, I felt so worried. What kind of horror was this? Was it...

The girl murmured half a word before blacking out. Her eyes were staring widely at a point directly behind me. "Vamp..."

I blinked. Vamp? Oh, no, don't tell me she meant...

"Usually I wouldn't be so careless. Really, usually I would make sure to do a Memory Charm on her, and bring her to a spot where she could easily be found by humans, not here at the edge of a forest, hidden among the trees. But as you've got to understand, I was desperate. Desperateness can do that to people--change them. Dying men can be like that...Not that, technically, I am alive...but that's simply a minor detail."

Quickly, I turned around towards the new voice. The hooded, cloak-swathed figure behind me was not what I would call a man. But he wasn't too far from it. I estimated his age to be about 16 or so. His form was that of someone tall and lean. For some reason, he struck me as a clever, confident, serious person. Fast, too, for the way his hands--twiddling around randomly in front of him--disappeared when I turned around was almost too quick to see. But, although at the time they didn't seem important, I noticed several details about those hands: Thin, very pale, perhaps aristocratic, the right decorated by a single, emerald-studded ring, the left holding a wand. He stood directly behind me, the only thing about him not black being the glimmer of eyes I saw glowing out from the darkness of his hood.

I knew who he was. Actually, no, I didn't. But I knew what he was. "You're a vampire, aren't you?" I regretted the words as soon as I said them. What on earth was I doing? This wasn't some boy playing Dracula games. The girl had said he was one herself! Kind of...But what was a vampire doing out in the sunlight? They couldn't stand it. Enough sunlight, and they would die...or, er, whatever it was the undead did...because they were already dead, right? Perhaps they shriveled up in the sun? Why was this vampire out here?

"An astute observation, Milady. I am vampiristic, and, you may note, quite proud of it. Now then, would you like me to escort you back to Hogsmeade, or would you rather travel alone?"

I blinked. What did he think he was doing? Were vampires normally like this? I had watched too many Muggle movies for my own good. I had mixed up what little I'd read about them in books to what I'd watched in horror flicks and films. Thinking back on my notes about them taken in History of Magic, I remembered a few facts: They couldn't bear the sunlight for more then an hour. They were more agile, fast, and had better senses than humans. They were, in a sense, nocturnal. Their skin was always quite pale, one reason for them being called the undead, for they were said to resemble corpses, walking, pale and gaunt creatures of the night.

But most everyone knew that, as well as the myths about them being repelled by crosses, holy water, garlic, and a wooden stake through the heart being what would kill them. No one knew if any of those were true, for vampires were a vastly decreasing species. Vampire hunters didn't hunt them as viciously and successfully as in olden days, and nowadays vampires were taking up the guise of humans. Those who weren't doing so, it was said, were either hidden away in dark, uninhabited places of the world, or else they were living alone in a sheltered place, or working for You-Know-Who as Death Eaters.

In truth, I didn't know very much about vampires. There were so many stereotypes and unproven theories about them that it was hard to know what was true unless you actually encountered one. Of course, there was one standing before me, but still, that didn't mean he would tell me all the secrets of vampirism.

I figured he must be a half-vampire. That was why he dared to venture out in sunlight. He must be one of the ones living in a dark, uninhabited place--the forest by Hogsmeade! This way he has opportunity to easily corner victims when they're alone, yet not be caught. But now he's been caught. By me. Suddenly I was filled with fear. Oh, god. What do I do?

Smiling, I said, "No thank you sir, I'd rather have peace and quiet on my walk back to Hogsmeade," damnit, I shouldn't have mentioned where I was going, I thought, "although the offer is very kind of you. I appreciate it."

With that said, I carefully levitated the vampire's victim to the side of the road, leaned her up against a tree, and cast a few healing spells on her. Someone else would find her. I put a Shielding Charm on her as well, just to make sure nothing else harmed the poor girl. I looked up from my spell casting as the vampire came up behind me again. He was so damn quiet. Catlike.

Doing my best not to show my sudden apprehension, I nodded courteously to him, and went on my way back to Hogsmeade. Once I rounded the road's curve and the vampire was out of sight, I began walking a little faster, glancing around and back every few seconds to make sure he wasn't following me.

And he wasn't. I was so surprised. It was the closest I'd ever come to a traumatizing experience. It was also the closest I'd ever been and spoken to a dangerous human-like creature.

I had a feeling it wouldn't be the last.

-----*-----

That night, I read up on vampires as much as I could, and found out much information. But it took me so long to find the right book. I scourged what seemed to be the entire library (other than the Restricted Section, of course), and still, not a single book had in it information I didn't know about vampires. Finally I saw it: the book I knew would tell me things I felt I needed to know. The librarian told me the book had been checked out for one week before last Thursday--two days ago--and so that was why I hadn't found it before.

Feeling a jolt of excitement, I slid the book from the shelf and sat at a table. Giddy with anticipation, I opened it slowly, reverently, smiling at the whispers of the thin, yellowed pages against my fingers. Quickly I skimmed the book--the Table of Contents was half faded and gone--and found the heading: The Undead, and then turned a few pages to find the word 'vampire' blaring out at me. Eagerly I read the entire section on them, scribbling notes in my newly purchased notebook. Two particular pages interested me greatly:

Many of the myths on vampires are, in fact, not true. Vampire victims do not turn into vampires themselves, and, unless excessive blood is sucked, do not die. Although it is a traumatizing experience, and is known to cause victims pain, vampires do not necessarily suck blood from the victim's neck. Instead, they often simply make a cut--with their unusually tough, dark fingernails--somewhere on the victim's body, and suck only as much blood is necessary. Vampires see blood as their food and drink, but do not suck blood excessively unless they are starving or deranged.

In fact, most of the theories about vampires were created by the vampires' cousins, the vampaneeze. These creatures, although in many ways similar to vampires themselves, are deadly and vicious. They suck blood mostly from a victim's neck, and usually they are the ones to kill a victim by sucking excessive blood from the body. Due to so much unnecessary blood intake, vampaneeze are known to be bloated and have purple skin. They do not care for their victims welfare and see them as simply animals, whereas vampires treat their victims well other then sucking the necessary blood to feed their appetites. It is said that full vampires can breathe a gas which paralyzes the victim when it is inhaled, thus making the victim unable to escape, yet also the vampire's job is thus much easier.

There are only two known ways one can become a vampire. One, is to have a vampire's blood mixed with one's own through the hands, a magical kind of process, and two, to have a parent who is a full vampire. Vampires who were once humans have cuts on their fingers where blood was traded, but half or full vampires born that way do not. Vampires are very sensitive to sunlight, and exposure for over an hour can kill a vampire. However, half-vampires can stand sunlight until they turn of age. When a vampire turns of age, usually at eighteen years old, he or she stops aging like a human, and begins aging differently. For every ten human years, an adult vampire will age only one year. And for every five human years, a half-vampire will age one year.

There are many kinds of vampires. Often, the methods they use to suck blood and their victims are personalized by whether they are cursed or hexed. One rare type of vampire is the Psychic vampire, vampires who drain energy from humans, plants, and sometimes electrical machines, with or without knowing it. Not all psychic vampires are malevolent, in fact, they rarely are. Those who know that they lack energy and have the ability to drain it from people use their abilities well, and have practice. They choose a victim and then go through a ritual that will make sure that they get that person's energy.

There are several symptoms and signs by which one can identify a psychic vampire. Often they are the people who are intimidating, condescending, pessimistic, or complain a lot. They are known to sometimes be touchy feely, and give unwarranted or exaggerated physical signs of affection. Oftentimes they are used to being the center of attention, and become deflated when not; they can be insistent to give you some form of a gift that you will have to touch often, such as a pen or a book. When they are ill, which is seldom, they recover very quickly, and they always seem to get things to work in their favor. Some psychic vampires eyes change colors at different energy levels, and sometimes they are interested and/or fanatical about religion, martial arts, or the occult. Psychic vampires are also known to be an attractive, sensual person with high charisma, and these vampires that can appear young for their age are known to be very draining.

The only way to kill a vampire is to either cut off it's head (and stuff it with garlic as a precaution), or put a stake through its heart. Vampires rarely have spouses or indeed partners of any kind, whether romantic or otherwise. They like to keep themselves isolated and distant, and do not like to keep relationships of any kind unless business-like and/or with another vampire. Love between vampires and humans is highly forbidden, and humans who have found their entrancement with a vampire returned are known to become victims of the vampire years later.

The Vampire Bite is a method used by ancient vampires. This is when, rather then making a cut and sucking the blood, the vampire will sink it's teeth into the victim's neck, drinking the blood and, sometimes, killing the victim or leaving the victim traumatized and haunted for life by the experience. It is the method that, now, only deranged vampires or vampaneeze use. Often, using this demoniac method, the vampire will physically harm, or, if they have no principles, sexually assault and/or torture the victim. However, most often the Vampire's Bite simply implicates the method of a vampire biting into the victim's neck in order to feed. The only known reason for a vampire to choose the neck is because it is the part of human anatomy that supplies much blood and is easiest to get at. Also, if a victim is especially troublesome and the vampire is especially brutal, it is simple for the vampire to kill the victim by cracking his or her neck. Usually the victim's of vampires are female, for the supposed theory that the vampire finds the blood sweeter and more satisfying.

The attitudes of vampires do not vary much. They are quiet, isolate creatures, most enjoying their loneliness because it is the way they have known for centuries. They keep their secrets to themselves, yet often enjoy recounting especially dramatic tales about victims to an eager listener. Some vampires are known to have quick tempers, however, most are quite impassive and nonviolent. Vampires who use seduction for the purpose of luring victims are known to primp, however, most of them simply be as inconspicuous and attract as little attention to themselves before attacking a victim. They choose their victims very carefully, and, if they have not already gathered much information on that person, test the victim's blood before making an attack plan. Vampires are very strategic and cautious.

Suspicious that you know a vampire? Turn to page 436.

I shut the book after reading that, and sticking a bookmark at that spot, I turned to page 436, but then promptly lay my head on the book. I yawned, and then fell into a deep sleep.