The Houses Competition

House: Gryffindor

Class/Subject: Care of Magical Creatures

Prompts: (action) being chased, (character) Angelina Johnson, and (object) malfunctioning portkey

Drabble/Standard: Standard

Word Count: 2,425 words

Warning for Vampire!AU, mention of character death, a slight bit of mental torture, and a slight bit out of character. I would like to take this time to thank everyone who beta read this for me. It means so much that you would take the time to help me so thank you very much.

Angelina looked around her in horror as she realized that the portkey she'd taken hadn't dropped her off at the right destination. In hindsight, she should have known that something was off when the portkey wasn't the object she'd been told it was.

She'd been told by her source, a rather cryptic voice on her prepaid cell phone that George had provided for their prank night fun, that she should go to Ottery St. Catchpole around nine o'clock that night. Angelina hadn't thought anything strange about it. She'd figured that it was George's way of trying to play a prank on her by getting her to travel all the way to Ottery St. Catchpole, just to find no one in sight. He'd pranked her like this several times before, and she was getting tired of it; nevertheless, she'd told the person on the other end of the phone that she'd come.

They, in turn, had told her to look out for a mangy shoe that would be her portkey. Instead, Angelina found herself standing on top of a tiny hill outside of Godric's Hollow, staring daggers at a mangy-looking ballet slipper. She should have known that George's sense of humor would come up with something like this, making fun of her for not being the girly girl type.

Reaching out to touch the shoe, she gasped in shock when it bounced away from her. Not once in her life had she seen a portkey do something like that. The pink and brown stained ballet slipper got up on its pointed toe and bounced further away from her each time she reached out to touch it. Cursing, she tried again and again to grab the shoe. Reaching out and clamping her hand on the slimy, wet, mud-stained ballet shoe, Angelina smirked in relief. At least this part of her misery was over and done with. The portkey began to glow with a violent light that she was sure would have made her go blind had she continued to look at it.

Then, the strangest thing, even stranger than the bizarre glow of the portkey, happened. The shoe began to emit a heat she'd never felt from a portkey before. It felt like she had her hand on a red-hot poker, and for the life of her, she couldn't get her hand off of the thing fast enough.

Cursing and blowing on her hand as she ran to keep from plowing into the Earth, she looked at her hand. The sole of the ballet shoe was now ingrained in her palm from the heat that the portkey had given off. A breeze went past her, blowing her chocolate-colored locks in the air. She tried to track whatever was making the whoosh but stopped when she looked towards the spot where the portkey had fallen when she'd released her hand from it.

Gasping in horror at what she saw, Angelina realized that the portkey was in the middle of a blazing forest fire. It probably had been set by the portkey, but she doubted that anyone would believe her if they found her here. She was the only person near the forest that could have possibly set the fire, and she had no witnesses.

"Pretty clever, right?" a voice asked, making Angelina jump. She hadn't realized that someone else was there. "Didn't mean to scare you, pretty face."

"What's pretty clever?" Angelina asked, eyeing the man that was standing next to her.

He seemed really familiar; it was almost like she'd met him before, but she just couldn't pinpoint where she'd met him.

"Using a portkey to lure you here," the man said, smiling and eyeing her like she was a tasty treat that had just been put in front of him. "I mean, I wasn't sure you were going to get the portkey to begin with. I found a way to mess with the spell so that it would run away from people until someone caught it."

"Why are you telling me this?" Angelina asked, wondering what was wrong with this man. "What do you mean lure me here? Where is here?"

A smile that no longer seemed friendly stretched across the man's features and Angelina realized where she knew him from; he had been the captain of the Slytherin Quidditch team, Marcus Flint. But that was impossible. Marcus Flint was dead.

"You're wondering how I'm still alive, aren't you, Johnson?" Flint asked, stalking ever closer as she began to back away from him. "It's not very hard when you've got vampire blood in your system, and you die during the Battle of Hogwarts."

Angelina's eyes widened in terror as Marcus lunged for her. Thinking as fast as she could, she sidestepped him, sending him flying towards one of the burning trees not too far from where they were. Looking around, all she could see was sprawling countryside as far the eye could see.

She looked at where Marcus was quickly backing away from the fire. Angelina realized she had two options. She could turn and run into the countryside, but that presented a number of problems, or she could run into the flaming forest, which presented major problems of its own.

"Are you stupid?" Marcus called after Angelina as she dashed into the burning forest. He could see her crashing through the tangle of tree limbs and trying to avoid the places where the fire was burning uncontrollably. "You won't make it out of there alive."

With Marcus's taunts ringing in her ears, Angelina continued to crash through the hot, dense forest. It wasn't her brightest idea, but it was an idea; Marcus didn't seem to want to have anything to do with the fire.

She'd been so intent on running and escaping both Marcus Flint and the forest fire that she'd forgotten the main point: Marcus was a vampire, and he could run faster than she could. It was a fact that was brought fully into focus as she crashed through the dense closely packed trees at the forest's other side.

Marcus stood there, an angry look coloring stormy grey eyes that would have otherwise been attractive if they weren't glaring daggers at her. Backing up into the forest again, she tried to think of another way out.

"You know, you could just give yourself over to me, don't you?" Marcus asked. "There is no way of escape for you. You run back the way you came, and I'll just be there waiting for you. It'll be a vicious cycle until either you come to me or die in this fire. Which is going to be, Johnson? You don't strike me as a burning type of girl."

She mentally cursed yet again. He was right, of course. There really was no means of escape. She couldn't run back the way she'd…

"Wait a second," she whispered to herself. What if she didn't try to run back the way she'd come? What if she only made him think she was going to run back the way she came?

"What was that?" Flint asked, cocking his head to the side like a curious cocker spaniel. "What did you just say?"

"Nothing," she shouted, turning towards the forest. She ran a few paces into the woods, before hearing the telltale whoosh of air that told her Marcus had left already. Turning back, she quickly dashed out of the forest and on into the night.

She ran and ran, and then she ran some more. She didn't know how long she'd been running before she felt something hit her. Not just hit her but bulldozed her into the ground. The last thing she saw before she passed out was Marcus Flint's eyes going dark and his fangs protruding from his teeth.

Angelina woke up to find George Weasley sitting at the end of her bed, watching her carefully. He seemed really concerned, which was unusual for George. Losing Fred during the Battle of Hogwarts had changed him, of course, it had changed all of them, but somehow he had emerged from the shell of those first few May days, and now she could sometimes see hints of the person they all used to know and love. Slowly, he had returned to his happy and smiley persona, although, some days he would get a sad look in his eyes like he remembered or saw something they couldn't. For Angelina to see him so worried for her, it made her heart flutter.

"You're awake?" he said ecstatically. "What happened to you? I grew concerned when you didn't show up for the prank I was going to pull on you, and then I got this call from Katie saying that you'd been taken to St. Mungos with severe blood loss and fang marks in your neck and few slight burns which were quickly healed. What happened to you?"

Try as she might, Angelina could not remember how she'd escaped Marcus Flint or, for that matter, if she hadn't just dreamed the whole thing. Obviously, she hadn't if George knew what had happened, and Katie, too apparently.

The scent of burned trees filled her nostrils as she put her hand over her face. Whatever had happened, burned trees had been involved. She sighed and shook her head.

"I don't know," she said. "I can't piece it all together. Marcus Flint may have been there, but I'm not sure. All I know is there was a forest fire and the portkey went wonky."

"The portkey went wonky?" George cocked his head and looked at her.

He'd likely never heard of a portkey going wonky before in his entire life. He probably thought that she was just making that up so that she wouldn't have to make up a real excuse for blowing off his prank night.

"The portkey went wonky, George!" she shouted. "It practically burned itself into the palm of my hand. See?" She held up her hand, which still had the sole of the ballet slipper burned into it. "I'm not making this up."

"That wasn't the portkey," George told her. "The portkey I sent for you was a trainer, not a ballet slipper."

Angelina tried to get her mind around this new information, but was it new information? Something was nagging at the back of her mind. Something wanted her to remember the night before. A tiny bit of information she'd learned from Marcus, but what was it?

"Visiting hours are over, Sweetie," the Healer said, putting a hand on George's shoulder.

"You can come back to visit tomorrow morning."

"But…" George said, looking between Angelina and the Healer.

"It's alright, George," Angelina chuckled, forgetting her fear for a moment. She was in St. Mungos. She couldn't think of a safer place than this besides Hogwarts or Gringotts, and neither of those was an option. "I don't think anything horrible is going to happen to me here."

"I just don't want to see you get even more hurt, alright?" George pointed out, allowing his grief and fear of losing someone else to show, or at least that was what Angelina thought.

"I can assure you that no one is going to get into this room," the Healer said, pushing a strand of pale blonde hair behind her ears. "She's as safe as a baby in his mother's arms. Trust me." She smiled in a friendly manner.

"Fine," George said with a sigh. "But you'll call me first thing tomorrow morning, right, Lina?"

"Yes." Angelina sighed.

She watched as George gathered his coat and bid her goodbye. Angelina couldn't help the shiver of something akin to anticipation that went down her spine. She didn't know what she was waiting for, but she knew that something big was going to happen tonight.

Angelina didn't know when she'd gone to sleep that night, but she knew as soon as she woke up that trouble was nearby. She knew this fact because she had woken up to the sound of Marcus Flint's voice in her ear.

"Wakey wakey, eggs, and baccy," he said tauntingly, standing over her bed, fangs out and ready to tear into her.

Without thinking, she did the first thing that came to mind, pulling both her legs back and kicking them straight into Marcus's gut. She could hear him cough and retch as she ran from the room.

The stark white tile was cold under her feet as she ran as fast as she could. She had to find the Healer or someone, anyone. She didn't want to die. Not here, not in St. Mungos, away from her family and friends.

Angelina could hear Marcus's heavy footfalls as he raced to catch up with her. It wasn't fair. Life was never really fair though, was it? She felt his arms snake around her from behind and her head being tilted to the side. Then, as she felt the sharp pain of his fangs entering her neck, Angelina screamed for all she was worth.

It didn't seem to phase him much though. He continued to drink and drink and drink her blood. As she started to lose consciousness, she felt herself fall to the floor. She didn't understand why he was smiling at her. Angelina didn't understand what was happening to her. Then everything faded to black, and there was nothing at all.

"You promised me she'd be safe," George screamed at the Healer as they both stood at the bottom of a bed in a very private room in St. Mungos. "You promised nothing would happen to her, and yet here we are."

"We don't know how the vampire got into the hospital," the Healer said. "We don't know how any of this happened. We just know that it did, and now we have to help Miss Johnson deal with the outcome of what's happened to her."

"What's happened to me?" Angelina asked, feeling her fangs slowly protrude. "This?" She lunged at both George and the Healer with an open mouth and full fangs.

Angelina woke with a start in a strange building she'd never seen before. She looked around to find that she was surrounded by strange people she'd never met before. Then one familiar face loomed over her.

She realized that she hadn't escaped after all. She'd never made it to the hospital. Marcus Flint had brought her to a place; Merlin knew where. She was a vampire, and now she was going to make it her life's mission to make his life a living hell. Starting right now.

I hope you all enjoyed Dream a Little Dream of Me as much as I enjoyed writing.