Harry Potter: Beyond the Looking Glass
18. Chapter 17: Dumbledore's Army
A/N: And now the past comes back to haunt us. Thanks as usual to Lady Starlight for her work on this chapter, and I still own nothing really.
Chapter 17: Dumbledore's Army.
*******************************Hogwarts Library**************************
October 20, 2015
8:00 pm
"Emilia," Sirius asked softly from near her ear, "can I talk to you..." he looked at over at Xander, where the elder Lupin was sitting across the table going over something with his sister, "in private?"
Emilia turned to her brother, sweeping a lock of inky hair out of her eyes. She looked over to Xander, caught a tiny nod, and stood, her fingers tapping the side of her leg automatically to feel the grip of her wand through the fabric of her skirt.
Sirius waited as she kissed the top of Xander's head in passing, and followed through the stacks towards the front of the Library. They dodged around a cart that was working its way through the shelves, spitting out volumes to reshelve themselves. Emilia spun in place, watching a moldy book snap past her nose, and land with a thunk on a shelf behind her. She frowned slightly as Sirius kept walking past the checkout desk and into the main castle.
Emilia caught him halfway down the hall, and walked alongside him as he continued down the hall. Sirius moved with a purposeful stride, his hand movements tight and controlled, as he moved unerringly towards a tapestry depicting a pure white kneazle wearing a witches' hat and directing an orchestra of unmanned instruments with a wand in one of its paws. He pushed aside the tapestry and vanished.
She followed, to find herself on a stone balcony overlooking the early evening grounds. The air around her was warm, and the vague tingle of contained energies told her of a warming field in place. She took another step forward to stand next to Sirius at the balustrade, where he was leaning with his forearms on rail, looking down into the dim grounds. He took a breath as she settled next to him, "It's just beginning." Emilia nodded silently, and Sirius gave her a quick smile. "I'm tired of feeling sorry for myself, Em," he added after a bit, thoughtfully.
"You just had a hard time of it, bro, I'd been as bad if I didn't have Xan."
Sirius frowned slightly at that comment, as did Emilia after what she had said registered. She blanched, but he waved it away, "We need to be ready next time, Em...not just us..."
"Seems it's been done before," was her only reply. She watched a pair of owls wheel past the side of the castle, "should I contact, Mum and Dad, they might have ideas..." he started to shake his head, and she looked over, "They aren't Molly Weasley, Sirius, they know we aren't going to hide under the tables when it comes."
"Who do you think we should bring in to start?"
Emilia stopped and her eyes looked up and to the left, thinking. She worried her bottom lip in her teeth for a moment longer, before responding slowly, "Xander, Rain, Harriet," she held her thoughtful expression as something flashed in Sirius' eyes, "they are a given of course. As are Elliot...Justin, Anna and Nate are trustworthy, of course, but we might put them in a bind with their positions. Beyond them, Abby's going to be there if Elliot is as is Shin, the twins and Bob...beyond that...maybe Dan and his girlfriend, and Virginia's as well..."
He smiled faintly, "Has Aunt Molly ever figured that out?"
"Aunt Molly is still in the eighteen hundreds," Emilia replied tightly, "she can get over it...I'm more worried about her still bitching about Harriet being at our place...Like Mum and Dad would let a bleeding orgy or something go on, like she seems to think is happening or something."
"This weekend?"
"Yeah, we can use the Room to start, it'll be more or less discrete..."
**************************South London****************************
October 23, 2015
11:20 pm
Harry stood from a crouch with a soft sigh and looked over at Hermione. She frowned and brushed her hands along the outside of Harry's long wool coat she had borrowed to cover her short red dress. They had been at dinner with her parents to celebrate Roger's birthday when the call had come through, summoning them here to the darkness outside of a Muggle department store.
They had arrived to find a half-dozen Aurors spread out, a team of Wendel's forensic group on site, and seven bodies strewn about as if attacked by a mad animal. Blood was splattered on several walls and across a plate glass window, but no pools of red were spreading out from under them, as might be indicated by the ripped-out throats.
Hermione reached up and tugged at the knot her hair was piled in on the top of her head, before returning a slight shrug. She looked down at the body spread out under her, then at the half-dozen others tossed about the street like so many discarded toys. They are all drained, Harry.
I noticed, he murmured in return, and held his wife's eyes for a beat from across the street. You look beautiful tonight, he murmured, and she gave him a wan smile pacing over to him, striding purposefully even in two-inch heels.
She stopped next to him, watching as several wizards moved around the bodies, cataloging the findings and making preparations to vanish the remains into the ether.
She stood closely to him for a minute of silence, This wasn't even a fight, Harry, she muttered as she did not quite lean back into him, That girl was just a trainee, she had a flat about a block away...Hermione waved angrily towards a spilled sack of groceries, probably tried to save them...
Then, what? he asked, stepping away from her to examine the body of the young woman in question, her white blouse was ripped away, exposing a bright purple bra, which was almost covered in her blood. He closed his eyes; She isn't much older than Em, Mione...
I know. She reached into the pocket of Harry's coat and flipped open a mirror, and touched a short combination into the tiny keypad set under the screen. It wavered for a moment, and then settled down into the moiré pattern it took on when making secure calls. She waited as a pleasant female voice answered, and the pattern cleared to show a young blonde girl, "This is Agent Potter, authorization code, alpha seven two epsilon nine zulu seven two nine..." The girl straightened perceptively, and gave Hermione a nod; "We have a rogue Vampire on our hands." The girl nodded, only paling slightly as Hermione went on, "Call in the slayer team on call, have them radiate from here, and issue an advisory on it...Use the usual excuse to the Muggles."
Hermione flipped the mirror closed as the girl nodded again, and watched as Harry stood from his crouch, closing the eyes of the girl with a tired hand. "I think that we might want to pay Deirdre another visit, Love," Hermione said softly.
"Yeah, we should do that."
******************************Cardiff*******************************
October 24, 2015
1:12 am
"FOOLS," A dark-haired, dark-eyed man roared and strode across the floor of an abandoned Muggle nightclub as a pair of women slipped in with smirks on their faces. He reached them just as the taller of the pair, a slim brunette dressed in a tight, half-undone white blouse and a short checkered skirt, looked at him with a sudden spike of fear replacing her glee.
She tumbled through the air, crashing back into a large mirror set over a polished bar and shattering it. Her companion dropped to her knees in front of the man, ripping open her top to expose her chest and tilting her head back to expose her throat. He reached down, twisting his hands in her hair and dragging her to her feet as he bent her head back. She whimpered as his head descended, and ivory-white fangs elongated before sliding into the pale skin of her neck.
He let the girl fall to the floor and shot out his hand, and the brunette flew across the room into his grasp. A sharp tug and her shirt tore away, before he jerked back on her hair and sunk his teeth into her as well. Red tears bloomed at the corners of her eyes as he tossed her on top of her blonde companion, and held her down with a gleaming black boot on her chest. "Do you have a thought in your scrambled little minds besides sex and blood?" he hissed and faint titters of almost laughter came from another pair of casually dressed vampires sitting at a table halfway across the room nursing a pair of steaming goblets of dark red liquid. They silenced at a glare, and he looked back at the table he had been sitting at, looking over several ancient parchments.
He gestured at a tall, bald man sitting there, with a mug of steaming coffee looking tiny in his huge hands. Lucian stood and nodded to a pair of lupine guards and walked over to his master. "Sire," he said neutrally as he stopped a pair of steps back and to the vampire's right.
Kernal Vacko looked back at him, and then at the pair still at his feet, "Tell me why, Sarah, love," the brunette shook slightly and whimpered quietly as he took his foot from her chest, and slowly knelt next to her, letting his fingers languidly trace down from the twin puncture marks on her neck to her chest and back, "Why should I allow you and Olga back into my bed-why I shouldn't just give you to the wolves tonight?
The blonde looked up at him with her upper lip vibrating slightly, exposing the tips of her fangs, "We're sorry...we were feeding...we weren't even going to kill them, and then that stupid girl..."
"Elucidate, Sarah," Vacko murmured, looking from Olga back to her as Lucian stood at his shoulder, his massive arms crossed across a muscled chest that a thousand pound suit did not even start to disguise.
She took a breath that she did not need and rose to her knees, her neck slightly bowed. "We love you, Kernal...we would never do anything to disappoint you...we didn't have a choice...we had picked up a meal at a club, and four men came along, and attacked us as we were feeding...We killed them for their temerity, and then that Auror girl came along and we had to kill her as well...she almost staked Olga..."
He lifted her eyes to his with one lone finger under her chin and started at her for a solid minute of silence. Kendal kissed her forehead, and lightly petted her side, slipping his hand under the open front of her shirt.
He sighed and cupped the back of her head, drawing her to his chest, before standing easily, and pulling both vampiresses with him. The pair draped along either side, as he looked back to Lucius, "They are telling the truth, old friend." Sarah purred quietly and nuzzled at his neck, letting her fangs scrape lightly along his neck.
"Shit happens as they say," the huge man growled, and if he was perturbed at losing the services of the pair for the night, he did not show it. "This does put a crimp in our activities, however. If the Aurors manage to connect the attack on the train, with this...unwitting action by your lieutenants, it could expose our connection with Bellatrix...and her unseen master." The were made a faint gesture of negation, and stepped closer so only Kendal and the pair of girls would hear him, "Kendal, I have been with you for over a hundred years, and you know that would do anything for you," the Master Vampire nodded, "My pups are at your castle, under your protection...But does this course seem wise? We have chafed under the restrictions the Elders have placed on us, especially since they failed to control Fenrir in the last war, and fear retributions, but if this goes wrong...if we are wrong about this, if it truly is not the means for our freedom from the chains that bind us...They will hunt us down, root and branch and we will be all dead...Potter and Dumbledore and the rest might limit it to us, but the Elders will come after our children after the human hunters have decimated us."
Kendal let his hands drop to the bellies of his companions, holding them more tightly to him, he had never meant the threat to send either of them to the werewolves for the night, "I know, old friend, but they have given us no choice...The Elders have ordered our children to be placed under their 'supervision', you know what that really means..."
He took both women about the waist and started off towards a set of stairs leading downward, towards a chamber he had had installed when he bought the club in the rundown industrial district as a base of operations. "I won't have mine murdered in the night by thousand-year-old crones, that have not taken a lover in decades."
*************************Room of Requirement*****************************
October 24, 2015
7:45 pm
Emilia watched as Dan and Chastity slipped into the room and the heavy oak door closed behind them as they walked over to stand behind one of the couches. The room had manifested, today, into a relaxed version of the Gryffindor common room, though with occasional hints of blue mixed in with the red and gold trim. Tall shelves of books, filled with titles ranging from
Chapter 17: Dumbledore's Army.
*******************************Hogwarts Library**************************
October 20, 2015
8:00 pm
"Emilia," Sirius asked softly from near her ear, "can I talk to you..." he looked at over at Xander, where the elder Lupin was sitting across the table going over something with his sister, "in private?"
Emilia turned to her brother, sweeping a lock of inky hair out of her eyes. She looked over to Xander, caught a tiny nod, and stood, her fingers tapping the side of her leg automatically to feel the grip of her wand through the fabric of her skirt.
Sirius waited as she kissed the top of Xander's head in passing, and followed through the stacks towards the front of the Library. They dodged around a cart that was working its way through the shelves, spitting out volumes to reshelve themselves. Emilia spun in place, watching a moldy book snap past her nose, and land with a thunk on a shelf behind her. She frowned slightly as Sirius kept walking past the checkout desk and into the main castle.
Emilia caught him halfway down the hall, and walked alongside him as he continued down the hall. Sirius moved with a purposeful stride, his hand movements tight and controlled, as he moved unerringly towards a tapestry depicting a pure white kneazle wearing a witches' hat and directing an orchestra of unmanned instruments with a wand in one of its paws. He pushed aside the tapestry and vanished.
She followed, to find herself on a stone balcony overlooking the early evening grounds. The air around her was warm, and the vague tingle of contained energies told her of a warming field in place. She took another step forward to stand next to Sirius at the balustrade, where he was leaning with his forearms on rail, looking down into the dim grounds. He took a breath as she settled next to him, "It's just beginning." Emilia nodded silently, and Sirius gave her a quick smile. "I'm tired of feeling sorry for myself, Em," he added after a bit, thoughtfully.
"You just had a hard time of it, bro, I'd been as bad if I didn't have Xan."
Sirius frowned slightly at that comment, as did Emilia after what she had said registered. She blanched, but he waved it away, "We need to be ready next time, Em...not just us..."
"Seems it's been done before," was her only reply. She watched a pair of owls wheel past the side of the castle, "should I contact, Mum and Dad, they might have ideas..." he started to shake his head, and she looked over, "They aren't Molly Weasley, Sirius, they know we aren't going to hide under the tables when it comes."
"Who do you think we should bring in to start?"
Emilia stopped and her eyes looked up and to the left, thinking. She worried her bottom lip in her teeth for a moment longer, before responding slowly, "Xander, Rain, Harriet," she held her thoughtful expression as something flashed in Sirius' eyes, "they are a given of course. As are Elliot...Justin, Anna and Nate are trustworthy, of course, but we might put them in a bind with their positions. Beyond them, Abby's going to be there if Elliot is as is Shin, the twins and Bob...beyond that...maybe Dan and his girlfriend, and Virginia's as well..."
He smiled faintly, "Has Aunt Molly ever figured that out?"
"Aunt Molly is still in the eighteen hundreds," Emilia replied tightly, "she can get over it...I'm more worried about her still bitching about Harriet being at our place...Like Mum and Dad would let a bleeding orgy or something go on, like she seems to think is happening or something."
"This weekend?"
"Yeah, we can use the Room to start, it'll be more or less discrete..."
**************************South London****************************
October 23, 2015
11:20 pm
Harry stood from a crouch with a soft sigh and looked over at Hermione. She frowned and brushed her hands along the outside of Harry's long wool coat she had borrowed to cover her short red dress. They had been at dinner with her parents to celebrate Roger's birthday when the call had come through, summoning them here to the darkness outside of a Muggle department store.
They had arrived to find a half-dozen Aurors spread out, a team of Wendel's forensic group on site, and seven bodies strewn about as if attacked by a mad animal. Blood was splattered on several walls and across a plate glass window, but no pools of red were spreading out from under them, as might be indicated by the ripped-out throats.
Hermione reached up and tugged at the knot her hair was piled in on the top of her head, before returning a slight shrug. She looked down at the body spread out under her, then at the half-dozen others tossed about the street like so many discarded toys. They are all drained, Harry.
I noticed, he murmured in return, and held his wife's eyes for a beat from across the street. You look beautiful tonight, he murmured, and she gave him a wan smile pacing over to him, striding purposefully even in two-inch heels.
She stopped next to him, watching as several wizards moved around the bodies, cataloging the findings and making preparations to vanish the remains into the ether.
She stood closely to him for a minute of silence, This wasn't even a fight, Harry, she muttered as she did not quite lean back into him, That girl was just a trainee, she had a flat about a block away...Hermione waved angrily towards a spilled sack of groceries, probably tried to save them...
Then, what? he asked, stepping away from her to examine the body of the young woman in question, her white blouse was ripped away, exposing a bright purple bra, which was almost covered in her blood. He closed his eyes; She isn't much older than Em, Mione...
I know. She reached into the pocket of Harry's coat and flipped open a mirror, and touched a short combination into the tiny keypad set under the screen. It wavered for a moment, and then settled down into the moiré pattern it took on when making secure calls. She waited as a pleasant female voice answered, and the pattern cleared to show a young blonde girl, "This is Agent Potter, authorization code, alpha seven two epsilon nine zulu seven two nine..." The girl straightened perceptively, and gave Hermione a nod; "We have a rogue Vampire on our hands." The girl nodded, only paling slightly as Hermione went on, "Call in the slayer team on call, have them radiate from here, and issue an advisory on it...Use the usual excuse to the Muggles."
Hermione flipped the mirror closed as the girl nodded again, and watched as Harry stood from his crouch, closing the eyes of the girl with a tired hand. "I think that we might want to pay Deirdre another visit, Love," Hermione said softly.
"Yeah, we should do that."
******************************Cardiff*******************************
October 24, 2015
1:12 am
"FOOLS," A dark-haired, dark-eyed man roared and strode across the floor of an abandoned Muggle nightclub as a pair of women slipped in with smirks on their faces. He reached them just as the taller of the pair, a slim brunette dressed in a tight, half-undone white blouse and a short checkered skirt, looked at him with a sudden spike of fear replacing her glee.
She tumbled through the air, crashing back into a large mirror set over a polished bar and shattering it. Her companion dropped to her knees in front of the man, ripping open her top to expose her chest and tilting her head back to expose her throat. He reached down, twisting his hands in her hair and dragging her to her feet as he bent her head back. She whimpered as his head descended, and ivory-white fangs elongated before sliding into the pale skin of her neck.
He let the girl fall to the floor and shot out his hand, and the brunette flew across the room into his grasp. A sharp tug and her shirt tore away, before he jerked back on her hair and sunk his teeth into her as well. Red tears bloomed at the corners of her eyes as he tossed her on top of her blonde companion, and held her down with a gleaming black boot on her chest. "Do you have a thought in your scrambled little minds besides sex and blood?" he hissed and faint titters of almost laughter came from another pair of casually dressed vampires sitting at a table halfway across the room nursing a pair of steaming goblets of dark red liquid. They silenced at a glare, and he looked back at the table he had been sitting at, looking over several ancient parchments.
He gestured at a tall, bald man sitting there, with a mug of steaming coffee looking tiny in his huge hands. Lucian stood and nodded to a pair of lupine guards and walked over to his master. "Sire," he said neutrally as he stopped a pair of steps back and to the vampire's right.
Kernal Vacko looked back at him, and then at the pair still at his feet, "Tell me why, Sarah, love," the brunette shook slightly and whimpered quietly as he took his foot from her chest, and slowly knelt next to her, letting his fingers languidly trace down from the twin puncture marks on her neck to her chest and back, "Why should I allow you and Olga back into my bed-why I shouldn't just give you to the wolves tonight?
The blonde looked up at him with her upper lip vibrating slightly, exposing the tips of her fangs, "We're sorry...we were feeding...we weren't even going to kill them, and then that stupid girl..."
"Elucidate, Sarah," Vacko murmured, looking from Olga back to her as Lucian stood at his shoulder, his massive arms crossed across a muscled chest that a thousand pound suit did not even start to disguise.
She took a breath that she did not need and rose to her knees, her neck slightly bowed. "We love you, Kernal...we would never do anything to disappoint you...we didn't have a choice...we had picked up a meal at a club, and four men came along, and attacked us as we were feeding...We killed them for their temerity, and then that Auror girl came along and we had to kill her as well...she almost staked Olga..."
He lifted her eyes to his with one lone finger under her chin and started at her for a solid minute of silence. Kendal kissed her forehead, and lightly petted her side, slipping his hand under the open front of her shirt.
He sighed and cupped the back of her head, drawing her to his chest, before standing easily, and pulling both vampiresses with him. The pair draped along either side, as he looked back to Lucius, "They are telling the truth, old friend." Sarah purred quietly and nuzzled at his neck, letting her fangs scrape lightly along his neck.
"Shit happens as they say," the huge man growled, and if he was perturbed at losing the services of the pair for the night, he did not show it. "This does put a crimp in our activities, however. If the Aurors manage to connect the attack on the train, with this...unwitting action by your lieutenants, it could expose our connection with Bellatrix...and her unseen master." The were made a faint gesture of negation, and stepped closer so only Kendal and the pair of girls would hear him, "Kendal, I have been with you for over a hundred years, and you know that would do anything for you," the Master Vampire nodded, "My pups are at your castle, under your protection...But does this course seem wise? We have chafed under the restrictions the Elders have placed on us, especially since they failed to control Fenrir in the last war, and fear retributions, but if this goes wrong...if we are wrong about this, if it truly is not the means for our freedom from the chains that bind us...They will hunt us down, root and branch and we will be all dead...Potter and Dumbledore and the rest might limit it to us, but the Elders will come after our children after the human hunters have decimated us."
Kendal let his hands drop to the bellies of his companions, holding them more tightly to him, he had never meant the threat to send either of them to the werewolves for the night, "I know, old friend, but they have given us no choice...The Elders have ordered our children to be placed under their 'supervision', you know what that really means..."
He took both women about the waist and started off towards a set of stairs leading downward, towards a chamber he had had installed when he bought the club in the rundown industrial district as a base of operations. "I won't have mine murdered in the night by thousand-year-old crones, that have not taken a lover in decades."
*************************Room of Requirement*****************************
October 24, 2015
7:45 pm
Emilia watched as Dan and Chastity slipped into the room and the heavy oak door closed behind them as they walked over to stand behind one of the couches. The room had manifested, today, into a relaxed version of the Gryffindor common room, though with occasional hints of blue mixed in with the red and gold trim. Tall shelves of books, filled with titles ranging from
Text from our crawl of the site, 25 November 2014.