I woke up to darkness and an odd stickiness in my hair.

Okay, I'll admit that the darkness thing was definitely normal. Considering my…condition, so to speak, it would've been relatively bad if I woke up to bright light. Being blind was definitely not something I could ever look forward to. Darkness in the morning was a good thing, but last I checked, hair-stickiness was definitely not normal. Not by anyone else's standards, and certainly not by mine.

I slowly raised my hand to the ends of my normally dry, not sticky, very normal hair and felt a very thick, very wet substance on the tips of my hair. Upon further inspection, I found that the strange substance also ran in streaks in random areas of my still shoulder-length, normally dry hair. I didn't have much more time to contemplate the foreign liquid as the drapes to my four-poster were yanked open. I groaned as I let my eyes adjust to the light and the three imposing figures bathing in it.

"Hey, look at the disgusting Mudblood today!" Pansy Parkinson sneered nastily from my footboard. From behind her, Daphne Greengrass and Tracey Davis wore identical (though slightly less repulsive) glares to their so-called "valiant" leader. I turned my eyes away from the light and focused them on the ground as I reached for my hair to finally see the damage done.

My hair was now a purply-brown with red at the ends, rather than its normal dark brown, and it seemed that it was nearly frozen in place from the liquid substance. Parkinson's snarling face forced itself toward mine.

"You finally look as trashy as your blood suggests. Not that you had any class to start with." The two harpies laughed nastily as I sighed, gathered my toiletry case from its (thankfully still there) place on the bottom shelf of my dresser), and walked toward the washroom.

This was a normal morning for me, though, I'll admit, this was one of those rare days where they actually stooped as low as pranking me. Funny, though, I would've thought that pranking was a rather classless thing to do in and of itself. Perhaps if it's inflicted upon a Muggleborn.

But then, I'm not a Muggleborn. I subconsciously raised my hand to my mouth as I rubbed gently against the upper left canine. It was almost fully grown back in. I groaned at the thought of grinding again. Mother was going to have a fit when she learned that they were growing in faster than they had when I first started Hogwarts. This was going to be the second time this month that I had to grind them. Sometimes I wondered if it was worth it-coming to Hogwarts as a-

"Ebony? You okay?" I heard a voice call out.

"Uh, ah-yeah. Fine," I managed a small, close-mouthed smile for the owner of the voice. The girl, Willow, glanced at me, worried.

"Are you ever going to stand up to them? I know that you're better than this, and they're not going to respect you otherwise." Good old Willow Rosier. Horribly blunt and an excellent judge of character. Quite possibly the only person in Slytherin with this particular combination and the only person to give me the time of day.

But with this gloopy whateverthehellitis in my hair, I really wasn't in the mood to tone down my language.

"Are you ever going to shut up about who I do and don't talk back to? You have the capability and I'm not going to do what you say." I grumbled, trying to keep my mouth as closed as possible. Willow gave a startled laugh.

"And you couldn't have said something like that about five minutes ago?" I turned back toward the washroom.

"I just didn't want to, alright?" I said quietly. "I came to Hogwarts to get an education, not to grovel at the feet of a bunch of brainless girls." I heard Willow give a sigh of defeat, but I couldn't be completely sure, as, at that point, I had already entered an empty shower stall.

-'-,-'-,-'-

As it turns out, the liquidy substance came out with water, though it had, admittedly, taken a lot of it to even come close to getting the color out. An hour and thousands of gallons of water later, the red and purple was mostly faded out, and my hair felt natural enough to the touch to allow me to exit the girl's washroom with only slight embarrassment. But, naturally, it was still enough to raise quite a few eyebrows in the Great Hall. I sighed and sat down at my usual place at the end of the table, alone (Willow was sitting with Millicent Bullstrode, who, while nicer than Parkinson and her band of pugs, was still not particularly fond of me. I tended to avoid her as needed). As I sat down, I saw my goblet automatically fill up with water.

And so began the worst part of my day: breakfast. I swallowed hard as I stared at the various foodstuffs on the table. I only needed a little bit, after all. Just enough to avoid suspicion. I eventually settled for devilled eggs, and ate them slowly, grimacing at taste.

Or lack thereof, I corrected myself grimly, taking a large gulp of water in the process. Water was the only "normal" food I could ingest without feeling the need to empty the contents of my stomach. Even still though, more than a few people stared at me in disbelief that I could ever hate something like their precious devilled eggs. I saw Parkinson pointing and laughing at me from a rather grumpy Draco Malfoy's lap as her pugs and his goons joined in. A lovely scene, I assure you. I hated being laughed at, and I honestly wished that I didn't have to come to breakfast just to get gawked at for no reason (except for my Technicolor hair, of course).

But then, it was worth it in the end. Because during lunch…

I smiled slightly at the thought of lunch. The best meal of the day. Wonderful, beautiful lunch, where I could eat alone and have my fill of whatever I wanted. Pig, cow, even chicken, sometimes…if I wanted it, I could get it.

Within reason, of course. If I asked for my favorite, I would've been slapped upside the head.

The chime of bells snapped me out of my daydreams (wonderful, amazing daydreams filled with delicious food), reminding me, once again, that Hogwarts was a school, and school meant classes, and classes meant Double Potions, and Double Potions meant…

Crap.

-'-,-'-,-'-

"No no no no no, Way!" Hermione Granger tsked as she grabbed the ladle out of my hands. "There's supposed to be a counter-clockwise turn every seventeenth turn. You were about to let it go an eighteenth time…"

"Sorry, Granger," I apologized quietly, letting Granger take control of the mixing.

"S'fine. No harm done yet, and I know that nobody could possibly stupid enough to do that on purpose," I twitched a little at this. It felt just a bit too much like an indirect insult to take comfortably. "Just cut up those ginseng roots, if you wouldn't mind. Shaved, and diced, it says,"

"Sure," I mumbled, the 'I can read, you know, Granger,' just barely not escaping my lips. I picked up the knife and started cutting.

In case it wasn't completely clear, I do not like Potions. At all. Not even a little bit. For multiple reasons. For one thing, there was never much need to cook at home, so I didn't have the slight advantage that most people had at home, and, for another, I didn't even know that I would have the opportunity to attend a Potions class, so I didn't have the "My First Potions Kit," or whatever the Muggle equivalent was. And furthermore-

A sudden, delightful smell permiated the air, and a quick 'ow' followed it.

"Goyle, you baboon!" Malfoy yelped, pinching the wound on his finger with his other hand. "Do my fingers look like roots to you? Merlin, you're useless everywhe-"

"Mr. Malfoy," The cool drawl of Professor Snape, resident Potion's master, interrupted. "Perhaps you would like to be escorted to Madame Pomfrey?" I couldn't hear the reply, too dazed by that wonderful smell. It smelled like happiness and joy rolled into one neat little package held so close to your nose but just out of reach, and-

"Ms. Way," I jumped slightly, and barely refocused enough to register that Snape was staring me down. "For your complete lack of focus, see me after class. It seems clear that the know-it-all was doing all of the work. So surprising, for a Slytherin to allow herself to give someone else the chance for her glory," I nodded, still in a daze.

-'-,-'-,-'-

The rest of Potions flew by in a whirl of that wonderful smell, only interrupted by the acrid addition of melting cauldrons, courtesy of, if I was correct, Seamus Finnegan and Neville Longbottom.

I really do question Snape's sanity for pairings like that one. Speaking of…

Snape slammed his hands on the teacher's desk, frustrated.

"Are you that stupid, Ebony?" Crap. The first name. He was pissed.

"What exactly did I do wrong, Severus?" Two could play at the name game. His left eye twitched with the mention of his given name. I smiled a bit in victory.

"You mean other than the colorful additions to your hair?" I frowned a little at this. Right. I nearly forgot about that. "The obvious look of pleasure on your face when Mr. Malfoy cut his finger when we were making Veritruserum. Which, in case you don't remember-"

"Is a colorless, odorless potion. I've heard it before," I interrupted dully. I could almost hear the sound of a vein popping out of his forhead.

"Precisely. Though I do which that your…situation…didn't hinder you from your potioneering. If it weren't for some of the instruments involved, you would have been beating your beaver of a partner."

"Granger," I corrected. She didn't seem to hate me, per say, which warranted the use of her name in my mind. "And you know that there's not much that I can do about it. Because of Longbottom and Finnegan-"

"I know," was the curt reply. We remained in silence for a moment before he spoke up.

"I still think that it's a miracle that you've managed to reach the second month of your Seventh Year at Hogwarts, but you still somehow managed to keep yourself hidden," he finally spoke. I stiffened a bit and sighed.

"Yeah, but I don't really-"

"Want to talk about it," he finished, nodding slightly. "I understand. I was just reminiscing how we picked your family name." He smirked as I laughed uneasily for a few moments, before remembering:

"Oh, and my teeth have started growing in again." Snape raised an eyebrow in surprise.

"Already?" I nodded. He sighed. "Very well. I'll talk to Dumbledore for getting you the proper tools to grind them back down." I winced in pain at the memory of what was to come in the proceeding hours.

"Thank you," I said, standing up and heading toward the doors. "See you tomorrow." He gave a curt nod, to which I turned around and exited the doors of the dungeon classroom.

And straight into Draco Malfoy, who had a confused and slightly disturbed look on his face and a white bandage on his finger.

"Oh, they've fixed your-"

"What are you?" he interrupted, his voice incredulous. My eyes widened, heart beating fast.

And there goes hiding behind my normalcy. Goodbye being a Muggleborn witch.

Time to face being a vampire in Hogwarts.

-'-,-'-,-'-

Thank you so much for reading the first chapter of "My Renewal, My Immortal." This, I believe, replaces Chapters One and Two of the original source material, so feel free to compare and contrast or whatever. There are going to be more characters in my story, and those characters are going to be much closer to their Canon counterparts than Tara's versions. However, and I'm saying this right now to avoid complaints later, my version of Draco Malfoy will be the most different compared to his Canon self. I have to give him a better soul that can love people outside of his immediate family, after all.

I am also aware that the Rosier line died with Evan Rosier before the First War ended. We're going to pretend that Willow's illegitimate, and the Rosier family needed an heir.

Also, the gloopy stuff in her hair is, as some of you may have guessed, paint. I figured that Fred and George would be selling it in their shop at this point, since Weasley's Wizard Wheezes opened in July of 1996, and this is October of 1997, and I can see them making some sort of paint-based prank.

Please tell me how my characterization, plot, etc. are, and I'll be quick to improve whatever is needed as soon as possible. If it can be contributed, I would love to hear it.

Thank you, once again, for reading.

-esbmusic42