The Muggleborn Vampire: A Dramione Story

Chapter 4: Decanters and Ducks

"You're a vampire, Miss Granger."

"I'm a what?!"

"Must I remind you not to make me repeat myself?"

Hermione stared at her black clad potions professor with utter shock. 'No, this can't be happening, he must be wrong.'

"A-are you sure?"

If looks could kill, Snape's glare would have been a hand grenade. "Are you questioning my intellect?"

Oh crap! "N-no sir, of course not!" Hermione backpeddled like mad. "I'm just an evidence-based learner, sir. I was just asking if you could explain what lead to this conclusion."

'She sure sounds like she could be my daughter.' Snape mused to himself. "Alright. Evidence number one: you have injested about a liter of blood without hesitation and have admitted that it quenches your thirst. Am I wrong in assuming such a thing?"

Hermione froze, her gaze landing on the decanter sitting at Snape's feet, in which part of her wanted to attack and finish it's contents like there was no tomorrow. "No sir, you're not wrong."

Snape smirked as he noticed her glance. He reached drown to pick up the bottle and poured her another cup of blood, which she took with a look of shame.

"Evidence number two: you have no pulse, though you are still talking and breathing. Though that's just a habit leftover from your time as a human, breathing. You could still survive if the act of breathing was unavailable, like being trapped underwater, for instance. It's more of a survival tool; people are more apt to notice if you're not breathing and may try to destroy you."

She couldn't find the words to reply, so she simply pressed two fingers to her wrists, remembering the way her mother...adoptive mother?...taught her to find a pulse.

She didn't find one.

"The first year is the hardest for new vampires." Snape continued in in his 'professor' mode. "Until you can learn to control your urge to hunt, you will be unable to attend classes and will have to be isolated from all humans to avoid you attacking them. You will feed on animal blood and donated human blood from the hospital wing. When you're more stable, you will be permitted to hunt for animals in the Forbidden Forest, under supervision, of course."

Nodding, Hermione studied her hands in her lap until a thought popped into her head. "But Professor, if I am a threat to humans, why don't I have the urge to attack you?"

Snape sneered at her and folded a leg over his lap to rest on his other knee. "You're the insufferable know it all, I'm sure you can figure that out."

She crinkled her nose at the name but it only lasted a moment when her head whipped around to face Snape, the answering clicking into place. "You're not human."

"So it seems."

'Ok, so Snape's not human... then what is he?' Hermione wracked her brain for all the possible forms creature inheritances came in: werewolf, neko, dragon, and obviously vampire, among others. Is it possible...? He surely knows a lot about the subject. "May...may I see your wrist?"

A huff and a grumble was her answer as he thrusted his right arm towards her. Hermione silently placed two fingers on the inside of his wrist, pressing down gently. "You don't have a pulse either, Professor."

"I haven't had one in twenty years."

Chocolate brown eyes bore into obsidian ones as many moments passed by in shocked silence. "So, the rumors were right."

"Out of countless incorrect drabble, one is bound to ring true occasionally." Snape shrugged, running a hand through his hair.

Hermione shook her head and leaned back into her pillow. "This is so absurd." She mused. "Yesterday, I was a normal girl looking forward to Hogsmeade and study sessions with my friends, now I'm willingly drinking blood by the liter and having mildly normal conversations with my also-a-vampire professor. Fate has an odd way of keeping us on our toes, doesn't she?"

"Indeed."

----

It had been three hours since Hermione found out that not only was she adopted, but she was at least a half blood with creature blood mixed in somewhere.

Ever since she received her Hogwarts acceptance letter and was told of her being a witch, Hermione had fully embraced and was immensely proud of her Muggleborn status and had almost fully built her identity and sense of self around this fact. Yes, her blood status was often a source of discrimination and bullying in her post-magic life, but she never let it totally tear her down. On the contrary, she had often used it as a platform to build up her educational and social success; yes, she was different then most of her classmates, but she was going to show the world that she could be as successful as any other magical person, no matter what they said.

In the span of six hours, however, her entire identity was shaken to the core. Her parents wearnt actually her parents, in the blood sense. Sure, they were the ones who raised her, fed her, held her when she cried and comforted her when she fell ill, but she had nothing physically in common with them anymore.

Hermione felt wrong for feeling so but she couldn't help but feel cheated and lied to. It was like that Muggle story about the ugly duckling. It had been told all it's life that it was a duck and it had no reason to question it, even when it was made fun of for looking different from all the other ducks. It wasnt until it was almost fully grown when it was revealed that it was actually a swan.

Could Hermione build a new, happy life as a swan, even though she still felt like an ugly duckling? How would the rest of the pond react to her not being a duck, especially now that she would be compelled to want to attack them? Was she examining this metaphor too literally? Probably.

Feeling overwhelming exhausted, Hermione removed the unread charms book from her lap and placed it on the table beside her. Her hand went automatically to the decanter of blood Snape left at her bedside when he left to update Dumbledore of her condition. Not finding her chalace in her line of sight, she hesitated for a moment before throwing caution to the wind as she began to sip the crimson liquid straight out of the bottle. 'Screw it' she thought 'if I'm a vampire now, I might as well embrace it. No need to be modest about it.'

"Good luck, ducks, a new swan is in the pond."