There's Something About Potter

Chapter 22

Oliver Wood crossed his arms over his chest and tapped his fingers against his bicep.

"Vampires have been given many names throughout history. We've been called nosferatu, lamia, ghouls, children of the night, and all sorts of rubbish. Oh and by the way, I would like to emphasize that vampires are most certainly not undead."

"So your biology is still the same as ours?" Ron Weasley asked.

"In a manner of speaking." Wood acquiesced, grinning slightly and answering him with a brief incline of his head. "But don't worry, we'll get to that. Before anything else, I'd like to begin our discussion by dispelling a very common belief about us."

He jumped off the table and walked over to stand in front of the blackboard. Behind him, a piece of chalk floated into the air and began writing the flow of their discussion down onto the board.

"We are, by no means, as flashy, hedonistic, or as extravagant as popular culture portrays us to be. So not to disappoint you all, but all those books that like to romanticize vampires by portraying us as gorgeous beings who like to spend their immortal lives in broody isolation? I'm sorry, but none of that is true."

Wood's lips twitched in amusement at the despondent looks he received from most of the girls in class.

"Just because someone's a vampire, it doesn't automatically mean he or she is gorgeous. We're not veela, after all. And we're not all broody, sexy or mysterious either. That's just in fiction."

"What about Count Dracula?" Seamus Finnigan suddenly blurted out, causing Draco and a few other purebloods in the classroom to roll their eyes.

"What about him?" Wood countered.

"Was he real?" Finnigan asked again, ducking his head and giving Wood a sheepish grin. "Just curious. My dad's mentioned him a few times in some muggle literature."

"Oh no, Dracula was actually quite real." Wood averred with a grimace and a slight shake of his head. "But only muggles like to refer to him as Count Dracula. We just call him by his real name — Vladislav III, and he was actually a Prince of Wallachia. Eventually, he became known as the Dracula that muggles know of today." He explained.

"Wow. So he actually existed?" Hermione Granger remarked.

"Yes, he did."

Wood walked back over to stand behind the teacher's table and slowly sat down. "And yes, he was a vampire. But he was also, to put it mildly, clinically insane. And it was because of him that so many of those ridiculous urban legends and beliefs about vampires came to be."

"Like what, Instructor?" Megan Jones asked curiously.

"Well, to name a few—" Wood paused and frowned to himself in thought. "—he liked to sleep in coffins, believing he was actually dead. He also believed that he needed to feed exclusively on human blood to survive, which of course, is certainly not the case."

"You don't need blood to survive?" Terry Boot asked incredulously, his eyebrows arching up in disbelief.

"We do, but I'll explain more on that later." Wood clarified with a cheeky grin. "Anyway, as I was saying, this bloke, Vladislav — or Dracula, if you prefer. Since he was also a wizard, he liked to play a lot of ridiculous pranks on the muggle villagers who lived near his castle. He liked to make himself invisible in mirrors; he transformed into a bat in front of them; he pretended he was afraid of garlic; that he needed an invitation before he could enter homes — he made up all sorts of rubbish, really. Eventually, all of his asinine pranks became so notorious to muggles that a lot of them wrote books about him. And so all of these false beliefs about vampires became immortalized." He explained.