So it's been a while, for which I apologise. College is hard. But look: here's more!

Again, I mean no offence when I satirise the bits that involve self-harm and suicide.

Standard disclaimers, and Tara Whatserface, etc.

W

Eleven.

AN: Everybody stop FLAMING, I don't understand why nobody likes my horrible PLOT and my painful MECHANICS! This chapter isn't STUPID, you'll see, it deals with serious SHIT like steak and inconsistency!

'NOOOOOOO!' I screamed dramatically. To be honest it was pretty bad acting. I mean, I couldn't even muster an action to go with the screaming, I just sort of stood there. So I kind of had to compensate by bitching Scary Hermione out when she tried to comfort me like a good groupie. Then I ran out of the Unspecified Room, and Dumbledore followed me, shouting unintelligibly and waving his hands around. He stopped just short of the point at which he would have become a paedophile. Because being a pervert is totally defined by exactly how long you chase after a teenage goth when she looks suicidal. I mean, you know. Who tries to keep a girl from self-damaging? It's perverted.

Anyway, I started crying tears of blood, which was odd because at first they were normal tears and I've already established like eight billion times that I cry blood. I slit both of my wrists, and then rubbed them all over my clothes for an excuse to change my costume again. At the last minute I decided I didn't have the mental capacity to compose another insane outfit and flung myself into the bathtub in the personal lavatory adjacent to my coffinroom. It was already full of steaming water; Filch knows about all my dramas and fills it just for me at exactly this time every day. I blared Linkin Park and grabbed the steak Flich left for me on a table by the bath, grasping the slimy tenderloin and almost, almost eating it.

I.

Was.

So.

Depressed.

My English sucked. I had no mental capacity. I was beautiful and had to come up with all of these frigging outfits because I changed my clothes so damned much. Everybody was in love with me. Oh, and Draco had committed suicide. My life was so hard. Why was my life so hard? Was it because I was this strange Mary Sue, and the universe must conspire against her? Against me? Against - dammit, I was getting my pronouns mixed up.

I dragged myself out of the bath and into yet another tawdry costume. Then I looked at the window and saw… Snap! Snap Snape, Severus Snape's long-lost twin! He was video taping me through the window, on a broomstick five hundred feet above the ground! And some random guy named Loopin was chewing evilly!

'EW YOU FUCKING PERVS, STOP LOOKING AT ME NAKED! ARE YOU PAEDOPHILES OR WHAT!' I screamed, seizing a black towel. As a random detail, the towel was black and plastered with the face of Marilyn Mason, a little-known but epically gothic condom-saleswoman. Because you needed to know that, didn't you?

Vampire, wonderful sulking red-eyed Vampire swooped in out of nowhere on a big green vine like those heroes sometimes do in really old movies about true love and the wilderness.

[Insert side-splittingly unfathomable scene in which Vampire Potter discovers a new species of garden gnome in his womb, Mary Sue's non-magical weapon magically refills its clip one sixth of a gajillion times, Hargrid H. Hagrid is revealed to be a super-senior, a Satanist, and a gothic rap artist, Snap is bulletproof but doesn't have any factors, and dear Ebony feels faint.]

'Because you're gothic?' Snap asked in a low voice, scared of Santa.

'BECAUSE I LOVE HER!'

Twelve.

AN: Stop flaming, dammit! It makes complete sense to stick Hogwarts in America and bludgeon the histories and personalities and IQs of my favourite characters in order to make them more "gothic!"

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I apparated to the hospital wing to recover from the wounds I had inflicted on myself long enough ago that if I had needed hospitalisation I would have died by now, even if I am a vampire that somehow bleeds. Madam Pomfrey charmed the scabs and wrapped up my wrists, and said I could go. I dithered, torn. If I left now, Hargrid wouldn't be able to come and see me and prove he wasn't a prep. So I told Madam Pomfrey to piss off and settled into a bed.

On cue, Hargrid shuffled in and approached my bed with his hands behind his back. He swung an arm around to reveal a bouquet of delicate pink roses. 'Ebony, I have something to say.'

'EW,' I replied, scootching back against the wall and eyeing the flowers with horrified contempt. 'Don't you know pink stuff carries Prepatitis? And roses? They're, like, breeding grounds for Prepatitis!'

'They're not roses, Ebony.' Hargrid said seriously.

'What, are they goths too, you poser prep?'

'I saved your life!'

'No, you didn't, or the author would have written it in somewhere if she had any brains!'

'I - I - whatever! Listen, I'm not a prep, and these aren't roses. Look!' He turned on the bouquet still in his outstretched hand, glared evilly, and muttered to them: 'Well, if you wanted honesty, that's all you had to say!'

I blinked. 'That's an MCR song, not a spell.'

'I know, I was just warming up my vocal cords. Ehem. Poorly disguised lyrics of a band I really like, now warped beyond all reason so the band shall go on strike!'

The roses burst into flame. But not a normal flame. A really gothic flame. The stems were untouched, but the petals were transformed into tongues of fire black as night. Hargrid wasn't holding a bouquet of pink roses; he was holding a bouquet of midnight fire.

I went oogley. 'Okay. I believe you. Where the hell is Draco?'

'Malfoy's gone?' Hargrid rolled his eyes. 'That boy. How do I know? Maybe this conveniently conjured fire will tell you something.'

So I stared into the gothic little pyre. The petal-tongues leapt and flickered, blocking the way to any truths that might lay in the heart of the flame. I could see nothing.

'You see, gothic grasshopper,' said Dumbledore, apparating to my side, 'to see what is in the flames, you must first find yourself, kay?'

'I HAVE FOUND MYSELF, YOU MEAN OLD MAN!' Hargrid burst out, startling the headmaster and me.

'Hargrid,' I said, 'he wasn't talking to you.' But Hargrid wasn't listening.

'You're a liar, Professor Dumbledore!' Hargrid stormed away and flung himself into a bed to pound the mattress with his fists and feet. Dumbledore and I stared at him, then at each other, shrugged, and went our separate ways.

I went to class that day in another one of my Halloween call-girl costumes, with my hair carefully arranged in a bird's nest.

'You look kawai, girl.' Scary Hermione said sadly, utilising new gothic jargon originating in sunny Hawaii.

'Sharp animal teeth.' I droned back. 'You too.' Then, abruptly, the weight of my troubles got to me, and I fled to my bathroom to slit my wrists again, right through Madam Pomfrey's bandages. I cried for awhile, drawing the curtains closed against any more peeping fucking Toms. Why did all the major characters have to be out to get me? Why would Loopin and Snap spy on me, didn't they have anything better to do, like save the wizarding world? No, maybe not, now that Harry Potter didn't even have a scar… But Dumbledore was the sodding headmaster, he had better things to do. Why would he follow me around giving superfluous advice and insulting me with all the poetical prowess of a ten-year-old? It was unfair! Unfair, unfair! And what did Dumbledore mean, anyway, that I had to find myself? I knew myself! Dammit, Dumbledore!

When I recovered, I went to another class. Vampire was there, covered in Hair of Magical Creatures from grooming Fluffy. He looked really sexy, his muscles bunching under sheet-white skin that gleamed with perspiration, his red eyes intensely focused on his task and yet so gorgeously melancholy. He ran the brush over the great dog's flank, soap running down his arm, and flicked the dog's central nose whenever it tried to snap at him. Vampire's dominance over the huge, dangerous animal was enthralling; I melted.

And then he looked at me. That intense, morose gaze lingered for a moment on mine. Then he stood, bare chest gleaming in the sunlight, his hair slicked against his forehead.

'Hi.' He said sadly.

'Hi.' I returned.

We leapt together with the inexorable pull of a magnet and began making wild animal love.

For exactly three seconds the entire class, in addition to Professor McGoggle, filling in for Hargrid while he was in St Mungo's for being a paedophile, watched with rapt attention. Then the professor, who still couldn't accept that a Mary Sue could never be one-upped in any way, started yelling. 'STOP IT NOW, YOU HORNY SIMPLETONS!'

I pulled away from Vampire, realising what I'd done, and turned it all on him. 'Vampire, you fucker!' I said, as though it were all his fault, 'Stop trying to screw me! When did you even start wanting to screw me? You know I love Draco!'

I stumbled out of our tangle of limbs with righteous indignation, intending to flee. But Vampire was not one to be upstaged.

'NOOOO!'

I whirled around again to see him doubled over in pain, clutching his head between his hands.

'OMFG!' He screamed, like a teenage girl who forgot she wasn't texting, 'NOOOO! My scar hurts! Because you can't possibly have figured that out by the fact that I'm screaming and clutching my head and I'm Harry Potter! NOOOOO!'

The class and teacher vanished, leaving us alone. I stood there and watched while his eyes rolled up in his head, seeing his red whites and wondering where the blue was.

'Draco!' He shrieked. 'No, don't hurt him! Draco! Ebony! Voldemort's got Draco!'

I gasped and hurried over. 'How do you know?'

'I see him! AAAARGH, DRACO. He's - Ebony, he's tied up and - and - gagged - and Voldemort's raping him.' Vampire fell to his knees and let out a ragged, wordless cry. I continued to sit there watching his sexy dramatics, too spellbound to conjure any emotion or action or thought or anything that might further the plot or make my character believable. When he eventually sprawled on his back beside Hargrid's cabin, his hair flopped out of his eyes and exposed his forehead. I gasped again. The lightning bolt scar, which until now had served no purpose in this story, had reappeared in an angry red line across his brow.

'Vampire! I thought you didn't have a scar anymore, even though you just screamed that it hurt!'

'I do.' He sighed. 'Diablo tried to change it into a pentagram for me, but he flubbed it, so I cover it up with foundation. But Ebony, Voldemort has Draco!'

Thirteen.

AN: Hey, Raven, let's do a little teenage drama thing that doesn't belong in an author's note! Did you take my sweater, bitch? So maybe I did take your Gerard Way poster, you can't have my sweater! No, I won't give Gerard back!

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Vampire and I ran up the stairs to Dumbledore's office, so scared we didn't even care that the Headmaster was a prep and we hated preps. In hindsight, we should have approached someone gothic, but Hogwarts was becoming so corrupted that you never knew who was on what side or how long they would stay there.

'Password?' The gargoyle prompted as we reached it. Vampire, gasping for breath because he wasn't actually a vampire and therefore nowhere near as longwinded as me, let out a groan and looked at me.

'What are we going to do?' He asked.

Desperate, I could only think of that movie Beetlejuice. There was nothing else for it.

"Dumbledore, Dumbledore, Dumbledore!" I cried. Vampire, still panting, joined in. For a split second the gargoyle made a face, sticking a stony finger into its ear to stop the ringing, and my heart fell. Then -

Dumbledore appeared from nowhere."What is it that you want now, you despicable snobs?" he demanded."Voldemort has Draco!" we cried together. We have to save him!" "No." Dumbledore chuckled. "I don't give an owl pellet what Voldemort does to Draco Malfoy. A real trouble-maker, him, especially with you, Ebony Way.' He glared at me over his half-moon spectacles. 'And anyway, don't you need a plot? Here it is. I give it to you: if you want your lover saved, you shall have to go and do it yourself.'

And he disapparated, presumably back to his study, where he could giggle over some shitty fan fiction.

Vampire hit the wall and broke down in tears. "My Draco!" he moaned. (AN: don't you think gay guys are like so hot!)"It's okay!" I tried, but tears of blood began to streak down his face. Which, I realised vaguely, didn't make much sense. But before I could ask him when he'd been Turned, he gave a gasp. "I've got an idea!""What is it?" I demanded."You'll see." he said, for suspense. He pulled his wand from his pocket, and with a flourish and a gothic flash of black fire we emerged from nowhere in a big scary room with a sign that read "VOLDEMORT'S LAIR." I let out an appreciative "wow" and, as Vampire pulled me deeper into the lair by the hand, made a mental note to make him teach me that spell. It was way more gothic than apparating; I wondered why he'd never used it before.

The room might better be described as a cavern. It was so huge that the far wall dissolved into black, and completely barren of furnishings. The corners of the creaking wooden floor were coated in unidentifiable grime, and the corners of the ceiling were hung with shadows and cobwebs that swayed in a nonexistent breeze. It wasn't what I had expected from the lair of the most feared wizard for a hundred hears; I would have gone with more posters and a menacing torture rack or something.

'Can you see a door?' Vampire hissed, nodding his head at the wall obscured by shadow. I squinted, and could just make out a doorframe. But what was… that looked like…. I cried out and stumbled back. Nailed to the door was a Hello Kitty poster! Oh, the horror!

I tripped over the hem of my costume and fell to the floor. Vampire uttered a startled yell and crouched to help. But his pale hands never reached me.

'Avada Kedavra!'

Fourteen.

Fuck off, you preps! Raven, sharp animal teeth for helping again. I'm sorry I couldn't update, but I was depressed and had to go to the hospital cause I slit my wrists. Because that's the sort of thing you blast over the internet. PS I'm not updating until you give me ten good reviews!

WARNING: THE CONTENT OF THIS CHAPTER MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR ENGLISH MAJORS, BIBLIOPHILES, HARRY POTTER FANS, JK ROWLING, OR CHILDREN OVER THREE. READER ADVISED TO SHIT HIS PANTS.

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The curse blasted through the single door and its Hello Kitty poster, missing Vampire and I by some ten feet. Screaming anyway, we scrambled up and toward the door, taking refuge on either side of the frame, where the caster couldn't see us.

'It's Wormtail!' Vampire cried, identifying the voice of his would-be killer. From within, even as Wormtail's scuffling steps approached our shelter, we heard a weak groan. Draco.

'Where's Voldemort?'

'Dunno. Maybe he stepped out for a coffee break.'

'What do we do?'

'We save him!'

'But don't we need a plan?'

'No! This is bad fiction, of course we don't need a plan!'

So, together, we leapt inside. Wormtail skidded to a halt, his rat instincts taking over the attack thing, but he had the courage to shout from a safe distance: 'Get out of my sight, you despicable preps!'

'You're the one with the Hello Kitty poster.' Vampire retorted - and pulled out a gun.

Wormtail flicked his wand before a single bullet barked, and the spell hit Vampire full in the chest.

'Vampire!' I screamed as he was thrown bodily into the far wall. I ran after him and fell to my knees by his side, forgetting Wormtail - and Draco - completely. He had crumpled to the floor beneath the large crack he'd made in the wall, blood streaming from one temple and head lolling. Keening, I took his face in my hands. 'Vampire, please, look at me! Say something!'

His glazed eyes, red and deep, found mine. I could see unspeakable pain there, and wailed, 'Oh, no, Vampire, please!'

'Ebony.' He croaked. 'Ebony.'

'Yes, I'm here, Vampire, I'm here!'

'Ebony….'

I leaned in closer to hear the broken words. His breath, when he spoke, tickled my ear.

'Remember what Dumbledore said.'

'What? Vampire -'

He slumped against me.

Behind me, Draco howled mutedly with grief. Closer, Wormtail laughed a horrible, squeaking laugh. Rage welled up in my chest, an explosion of hatred, and I whirled around.

"Ebony,' Wormtail beat me to words, 'I love you. Will you have sex with me?'

I stared at him for a moment, struggling with my fury and unable to comprehend. Then I began to laugh.

'You torture my boyfriend,' I advanced on him, my voice high and cold, 'you kill an innocent boy, and then you tell me you want to fuck me?'

He didn't seem to be capable of movement. He stared at me with his little rat eyes wide, shuddering, as I slid Draco's silver knife from my sleeve.

'You already have.' I hissed.

I ran him through.

'I completely understand, though.' I told him as he gurgled. 'Hard to pass up a piece of ass without a brain.'

With Wormtail dead on the floor, I fled to the other room. Draco was braced against a rack and struggling against the chains, tears streaming down his bloodied face. His cries were stifled by a gag, but I knew the name he was keening: "Vampire." I tore his bonds away and held him as he sobbed.

'He can't be dead,' Draco moaned. 'He can't be dead. It's not in the original!'

'Artistic license.' I choked around the lump in my throat. 'Come on… We have to get you out of here…'

I took hold of his hand and apparated to my dorm at Hogwarts. Miraculously, as soon as Draco stepped out of the void, his injuries were gone. He sighed in relief and fell into my coffin. I stood by the window and started to cry."What's wrong, honey?" asked Draco. He was pulling off his goth clothes, having forgotten his ordeal absolutely, and even in the depths of despair I noted and appreciated his caricatured physique. 'It's so unfair!' I shrieked. This wasn't at all the appropriate time, Vampire being dead and all, and Draco just having been tortured for no reason, but I had to voice what was really tearing me apart. 'Why can't I just be ugly or plain like all the other girls and preps?'Draco blinked. 'Why would you want to be ugly? I don't like the preps anyway. They're such sluts.''Yeah, but everyone is in love with me! Like Snape and Loopin, taking a fucking video of me naked. Hargrid says he's in love with me. Vampire likes - liked - me and even Wormtail professed his undying devotion! I just want to be with you, Draco! Why couldn't Santa have made me less fucking beautiful?" I shouted angrily. 'And I'm good at too many things! WHY CAN'T I JUST BE NORMAL? IT'S A FUCKING CURSE.'

I broke down and fled.

Fifteen.

AN: Stop flaming, ok? You suck. From now on every time someone flames me I'm gonna slit my wristses! Sharp animal teeth to Raven for helping!

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'Ebony!' cried Draco. 'No, please, come back!'"Whatever! Go have sex with Vampire!" I shouted.

A pause. Then -

'But he's dead!'

'Harry Potter died the minute Tara put pen to paper,' I shrieked back, 'But that didn't stop you from humping his cold, stiff corpse, did it?'

I slammed my bathroom door with a resounding CRACK and wept. My hands shook as I drew a razor from the medicine cabinet and dragged the blade across my skin. Once. Twice. Thrice…. Then I looked at my black GC watch and noticed it was time to go to Biology class. Yeah, I know that's a weird thing to notice in the throes of despair, and I know Hogwarts doesn't actually offer a biology class, but you know what, I'm like that.

Anyhow. Instant good mood; clothes! I dolled myself up in yet another costume, this one in rather bad taste in the overly-matching area, and spelled my hair so it stuck out like I'd just been hit by lightning. I paid some attention in advanced Biology, but got distracted and started doodling. I was turning a previously drawn pentagram into a guitar when, suddenly, the guitar turned into Draco!'Ebony, I love you!' he shouted from the parchment. "I don't care what those fucker preps and posers think. You're the most beautiful girl in the world. Before I met you I used to want to commit suicide all the time. Now I just wanna fucking be with you. I fucking love you!' And he began to sing the Chronicles of Life and Death right in front of the entire class! His singing voice was so amazing and gothic and sexy, like a cross between Gerard, Joel, Chester, Pierre and Marilyn Manson (AN: don't you think those guys are so hot? If you don't know who they are, get the fuck out of here! (And no, crossing those five musicians would not result in a voice so warped it would shatter glass at a B-flat at like two decibles)). Draco leapt out of the doodle, landing gracefully beside my desk.'Oh, my Santa.' I crowed. 'I fucking love you!' Some preps stared at us, but I flipped them the bird, and we kissed. It was just like Hilary Duff (I fucking hate that bitch) and Chad Michael Murray in a Cinderella Story (No, that film's not preppy). I grabbed Draco's hand and we gambolled out of the classroom amid a shower of daisies and red tulips. Loopin tried shouting at us, but his voice was drowned in a din of cheering as the class gave our parody a standing ovation.

This shit confuses me more and more every time I try to wrap my head around it. Just re-read one of the later chapters, twenty-three I think it was; which bloody year did Umbridge and Lupin teach, dammit?

Please review. I need a surprising amount of motivation for this thing.