A/N: Another week, another chapter. Let us see what we can get up to. As usual I really own nothing. Thanks
to Lady Starlight for her work on this chapter. And yep, I do know where I'm going with this. And now back
to the adventures of the extraordinarily powerful Potter family.
Chapter 7: A Past not of Our Own
**************************Elsewhere******************************
August 8, 2015
2:20 pm
Beyond the looking glass, a slim woman slid from the back of a black, winged, reptilian horse as it settled to the ground in a long-abandoned cemetery. She reached up and patted its nose before removing a plastic bag from a small pack, and opening it. Luna reached into the bag and pulled loose a large, bloody steak and offered it to her steed, giggling softly as it ate the meat in a single bite and proceeded to gently lick the blood from her fingers.
She looked up as a second Thestral alighted next to her and hers, and Ron slipped to the ground, patting his flying horse. He walked over to her, and looked up towards a run-down, large manor home.
Luna swallowed slightly as a sudden shiver ran down her spine, settling in the pit of her stomach. She leaned back against him as he stood close behind her and wrapped his arms around her. "We never came here, did we, not really," Ron said quietly in her ear, reaching up with one hand to slowly, continually, brush a loose strand behind her right ear. Luna shook her head silently and stepped forward, taking his hand and drawing her wand with the other.
Slowly, they moved up a grassy, overgrown hill, and started along an old, garden path, one that looked as if it had not been tended in many, many years. She shivered even more as she slipped through an invisible ward, still there after all the years. Ron looked back at her, concern in his eyes, but she waved his hands away and moved quickly, purposefully, towards the door of the Manor house.
A large, thick English Oak door barred her way for a bare instant before a blue bolt hammered out of her wand and sent burning splinters into the air, and dropping the two-inch-thick door into four pieces into the dark interior of the house. She stepped through the door behind her wand, knowing Ron was at her back, and into an utterly destroyed room. A shattered carved staircase led up to a large landing a floor up. She took a sharp breath as she kicked something in her path, looked down, and found white bone sticking out from the sleeve of an empty robe.
Ron looked over from across the room, where he was kneeling next to the remains of another Death Eater, this one with it's skull lying a half dozen paces away, "Harry was here," he said flatly.
"We all were," she replied, no trace of airiness in her tone. She stood from examining another Death Eater. She held up a wand in her hand and showed it to Ron, tilting it so he could see the silver trim to the ebony wand, "Looks like Lucius survived to meet his end with his master, here." She pocketed it and looked towards a dark set of stairs leading down off of the main room. Seventeen-year-old remains of Death Eaters led a path from the door to the stairs and both Ron and Luna could almost see the events of that long ago night, even though none had survived to give a first-hand account.
She flicked her wand in the air and a blue-white glowing orb appeared, sending out a spill of pure white light. The orb filled the room with brightness and razor-edged black shadows as it hovered at her shoulder and she started down the stairs. Ron followed her as she stepped over several empty, ruined robes. The soft skittering sound of rats and other vermin filled the stairs as she kept moving, turning in a slow spiral as she moved down and down, passing several landings, following a feeling in her gut.
Ron grunted something as they cut through walls of cobwebs, and she turned back to give him a small smile. He muttered something unintelligible and probably unprintable as he followed her.
They took two more turns around the spiral and stopped, stepping out into a black cavern. The bright white light from Luna's Illumination Sphere cast out twenty meters and stopped, as if being sucked into a black hole. Luna shivered again, her breath shortening as she staggered...her vision swirled as she collapsed to her knees... "LUNA," Ron screamed and dove to her side, his wand clattering to the ground next to him as he pulled her onto his lap.
Luna looked up with unseeing, glowing eyes, as she looked back in time...the darkness surrounding her swirled and shook as she felt herself being drawn forward without moving...
Harry stood shakily, he looked down, seeing Hermione's lifeless body, and already feeling the life start to drain away from him, pulling him away from here to follow her. He looked over, spotting his wand sitting on the ground at Voldemort's feet. He took a shaky breath as he tightened his grip on the Gryffindor Sword; then glanced back at the pair crumpled near the entrance, the bodies of a dozen Death Eaters on the ground around them.
Luna felt herself standing, looking down at herself and Ron, her doubles from this universe lying in a pool of blood. Immediately, she could see differences in the pair below her. Her long, blonde hair was cut short, with a pair of red streaks dyed in it, Ron's leg was bandaged, his left hand gone and replaced with a silver, metal prosthetic. She reached down to touch her own head and saw her hand pass through. She swallowed, looking up and around and blinked rapidly as she watched the end. She watched as Harry took a Crucio as he charged, and did not even slow, as he spun, the sword lifting and Voldemort died in an explosion of light and magic, tossing Harry back across the room.
Luna felt tears speckle her eyes as she saw him lift up on his arms shakily and crawl over to Hermione. He whispered something she did not catch and collapsed on top of her. She saw his aura flicker and vanish, the bright hidden light she had first seen from afar in a bespectacled boy walking between her King and the woman would become her sister, gone.
"I knew someone would come...eventually," a soft soprano said, cutting through the darkness. Luna looked up, and bit her lip, blinking rapidly as she found tears in her eyes again. Hermione stood there, but unlike the one she could see still lying under Harry, her life's blood mixing with his, the one standing wore a pure white shift, her hair was clean and hanging down her spine in easy waves. A ring glinted on her hand as she knelt, and unlike Luna, her hand did not slip through when she touched Harry's cheek.
She straightened and walked over to Luna, "Though I admit that I rather expected someone else. I always thought that Albus' death never made sense, or maybe Remus or someone else would have found us..." she looked down at the other Luna and then back up. Her eyes widened slightly, "Oh, I see...I had considered that as a last resort, but I knew Harry wouldn't run...that I wouldn't really..." She took a breath, "Did your Harry, the one in your universe...did he live?"
Luna nodded, knowing what she was really asking, "Yes, they did, they have a couple of sprogs now, ours is with them."
The other Hermione nodded, smiling faintly as she looked back to Harry then back at Luna, "Good, that was the one thing I could never afford to give him, the one thing I wanted more than anything...I suppose it was for the best. Why are you here then?"
"I need Harry or Riddle's wands," Luna replied, softly, still shaken as she looked down at Ron's body.
Dark brown eyes flickered as thoughts slipped around in this memory's thoughts, "You are going to try to use one of the wands to link to Fawkes are you, to take you home?" Luna just nodded. "Very well...they are over there..." the memory looked back towards Harry, "He was so brave...we weren't ready, not really, but we had destroyed all the Horcruxes and we couldn't wait. We fought our way in, Ron took out Bella and Lucius on the way in, and Harry...Harry was amazing, brilliant...it was almost lovely, in a dark way. Dolohov appeared in our way, and Harry didn't even break stride...it was like watching Dumbledore in his prime."
"Why are you here?"
"I wanted to be ready, I always was...except this time." The image of Hermione, looked back, holding her eyes, "Get the wands, and get home, get back to them...Harry and I loved you, Luna," she added as the image faded and Luna felt herself crash back into her body. She panted slightly, focusing on reintegrating into herself.
She looked up at Ron, "Let's get them and get out of here, Ronnie," Luna whispered and he nodded, running his fingers along her cheek. After a minute she pushed herself to her feet, and she moved, arrow-straight towards a far, dark corner.
Luna stopped as found a pair of empty cloaks, laying on top of each other. She knelt and with the tip of her wand, moved the robes about, and found nothing save a golden locket with "HJP" inscribed on one side. She looked up and back as a loud, metallic CLANK, came from somewhere behind, "I found Harry's sword," Ron said almost silently, Luna nodded, swallowing slightly, as he slipped it into a bottomless pouch at his side.
Luna pointed around with the tip of her wand for a moment longer then sighed, suddenly remembering she was a witch, with rolled eyes at her own stupidity, she flicked her wand in the air, and a beat later, a pair of wands shot out of the darkness. She grimaced slightly as Voldemort's twisted; ebony one reached her first, before Harry's appeared next, dropping lightly into her waiting hand. She quickly conjured a small, sealed bag and levitated Voldemort's into it, and sealed it with a flick of her wand. She slipped Harry's inside her shirt, holding it as far away from Voldemort's as she could by some unknown instinct. "Let's go, Ronald."
The ride back to the school was silent, not a word passed between the pair, despite their mounts flying close enough for easy conversation. Luna spent her entire trip with her head buried in the mane of her steed, murmuring nonsense words.
After two hours, the pair, frozen and exhausted slid from their mounts as they back beat to a halt on the thin beach surrounding the Black Lake. Ron looked over at his wife as she slid to the rocky shore, huddled against a non-existent cold and sent the Thestral on its way. Both horses whinnied as they escaped back into the forest, going to join the herd that still made its home in the forests around Hogwarts.
"Are you alright, Luna?" Ron asked as he walked over, kneeling next to her. She nodded, her eyes focused on a spot in front of her, and he stood, reaching into the pouch at his side and slowly withdrew the Sword of Gryffindor. He weighed the blade in his hands, for a moment, watching the late afternoon light as it glinted off the blade. He took a long, deep breath, reared back, and flung the blade out over the water.
It whirled out, hundreds of yards, far, far further than he could have possibly thrown it on his own before it stopped in mid-air. The blade slowly righted itself, the point pointing towards the stars, before it slowly sank below the still waters of the loch. "It seemed like the right thing to do," he explained to Luna, who nodded without looking up.
She sighed softly and leaned into him as he sat down beside her. Ron wrapped his arm around her waist and half-turned his head, resting his lips on her temple and leaving them there as the forest around them chittered softly with the sounds of life.
*****************************Godric's Hollow***************************
August 19, 2015
7:00 pm
Hermione slowly slipped down the long, circular staircase from the upper, above-ground levels of the Hollow. Blue-white
orbs lit as she stepped onto the stone floor of the cavern and moved towards a blank stretch of wall across the way.
She passed the range, which sat dark and silent, with a shattered target of a werewolf still downrange. She walked to a
locked steel mesh cabinet, which was lit from within with a blue bar of light at the top. Several Muggle handguns and
rifles were secured within, along with open cases of silver-
tipped, and sunlight-filled ammunition for the guns.
Hermione touched the lock with one finger, a green beam shot out from nowhere, to scan her left eye. She blinked rapidly as the beam faded away, and the cabinet clicked open. She removed several pistols from the cabinet and a half dozen loaded magazines for each before relocking it. She set them down on a table and moved on, crossing the thick, red workout mat. She sighed softly, finding a towel that one of the children, Em, Sirius, Harriet, or Harry had left on the mat.
She dropped it in a hamper as she stepped off the mat, and walked to the wall. Hermione reached into the back pocket of her jeans, and a balisong whirled around her fingers. She closed her eyes and grunted softly as she sliced her palm, squeezed her fist until blood dripped out and pressed her palm to the blank stone. A crack of light appeared in the stone, and with a soft, grinding sound, two slabs slid back into the rock, and she stepped into the dark void beyond.
As soon as Hermione stepped across the threshold, a soft, white glow appeared in the ceiling above, illuminating the room. She bit her lower lip, as she took a step forward and started to look around the small, secure room hidden below her home. Five items sat on display, five items that had had an immense cost to collect, and that had almost cost her soul, and that of the person reluctantly coming to stand in the door behind her. Hermione looked down at an old, scarred leather-bound journal with a large hole driven through the center of the cover.
She looked back over her shoulder as she dragged her fingers along the edge of the book and moved over to the next, an open gold and green locket inscribed with an S, that in some way had cemented her relationship to Harry. He smiled at her, and stepped into the room, wrapping his arms around her from behind and resting his head on her shoulder. He looked down at a flattened, golden cup set next to a gold ring set with a cracked, black stone in a small, black velvet box.
"Was it worth it, Harry?" Hermione asked as she looked at the only item not destroyed in their efforts to defeat Voldemort, Rowena's staff with the power to magnify one's powers of Transfiguration and Charms, even more so than a typical staff could provide. "What we paid, was it worth it..." She looked over at him and let her head lean against his. "These were all of them, weren't they, Harry?" she asked slightly plaintively, as Harry traced his fingers along her belly, pushing up the hem of her t-shirt.
"I don't know, Mione," Harry breathed softly in her ear. "I know that there were seven, counting him, destroyed. I don't see how he could have split his soul any more than that...It's been seventeen years, Hermione."
"It was thirteen before, Harry," she reminded him, not that he needed it, not that any of them would ever need a reminder of those days. There were too many nights without any semblance of sleep, too many scars on both of them, mental as well as physical, to ever forget. Hermione took a step forward, pulling out of his arms, to reach forward and touch Ravenclaw's Staff. "This was only one we saved...all of the others, we destroyed; even Albus destroyed the ring, instead of even trying to save it."
Harry shrugged, she did not turn to see it, but she knew he had anyway. "Honestly, what's to save...Helga's Cup maybe, but the rest of them were either already evil or useless anyway." He looked back towards the door, pulling on her slightly, "We need to get ready, love."
"Alright," she let him lead her from the room. It sealed behind them automatically, and she slowly walked back across the main room, pausing at the table where she had left the pistols. She took a magazine and rammed it home in one of the pistols before handing it over her shoulder to him. "Remus said he scented weres there...and where there are weres, there are probably vamps...those are loaded with a mix of silver and UV."
"My sword works fine, Hermione," Harry replied but took the weapon, and another three from her, placing them in a bag, anyway. He smirked slightly as she turned around, "So what are you wearing tonight?"
She leaned up and kissed his cheek, "You'll see, love." Hermione vanished without a sound and Harry laughed softly before deciding to walk up the stairs instead.
7:20 pm
Emilia looked over at Harriet as she made a small gesture in the air, causing a pointer to move up on the screen of her laptop. The screen fuzzed for a second and she tapped the side of the screen. "Sirius!" she yelled back up the stairs, from her seat on the sofa. "Mum, Sirius is letting his powers get out of whack again..."
"I'm not the one who screwed up the telly for a entire night because Xander was over," Sirius yelled back. Harriet giggled quietly and went back to her book, 1001 Ways to Transfigure the Untransfigurable. Emilia sighed softly as her computer returned to normal, at least as normal as anything around her, and continued to look at a Muggle website about magic. She giggled as she found a "spell" for creating fire.
"They have the words wrong," Harriet observed as she leaned over.
"They usually do," Em replied, "but they are good for a laugh. They have the right of it about the Loup-Garou though, at least on some sites, and there is a rather good site on Dragons I found, reads like it's taken directly from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them." The screen fuzzed out again, Emilia sighed heavily, "Bloody Hell, SIRUS!"
"Stop yelling at your brother," Harry said, walking out of the kitchen.
Emilia turned her head and her eyes widened slightly. "Damn, Dad," she said as she set aside the computer, "you look..."
"He's your father, Emilia Luna," Hermione said from the top of the stairs, "that's just wrong."
"Ha, ha, Mum..." Emilia replied and glanced over at Harry to find a slightly glazed look on his face. "Mum, you've caused Dad's brain to stop again. Emilia looked back to Hermione as she finished coming down the stairs. Emilia looked up with wry approval at the short black skirt under a short white top, that her mother was sporting. A black leather jacket, and black leather boots with a good two-inch heel completed the outfit, Emilia scanned down her body, a small smirk on her lips. "Your holster is showing, Mum," Emilia added after a moment.
Hermione glanced down to find the lower half of a combination wand and pistol holster peeking out from the bottom of the hem of her skirt. She shrugged, "I'll conceal it with a charm," she glanced over at Harry as he settled a long leather duster over his frame, concealing the sword riding his back and the wand holster strapped down his thigh, along with the sidearms behind his back, "Or maybe we'll be obvious. Don't know. Are you going to be here or at Xander's?"
"He should be along after a bit, he went to Nathan's to work on that damn broom of his again." Emilia said with a faint grimace.
"Fine," Hermione replied as she walked over to the door where Harry was waiting. She reached up and positioned her earrings in her ears, a pair of small emerald studs that Harry had given her years ago. "Double check the wards before you go to sleep, they are on lockdown now so you shouldn't have to worry about it."
"Honestly, Mum," Emilia sighed slightly exasperatedly, "we're not eight." She considered for a moment, "Well Sirius still is..."
"I heard that," Sirius yelled down the stairs.
"Try not to damage the house too much," Harry said as he grabbed a set of keys with a carved head of a large dog as a key chain from a hook next to the door.
"You can owl out for pizza if you want," Hermione added, finishing with her earrings and reaching over to grab Harry's hand. "Love you all," with that, she and Harry vanished, and a minute later a bass rumble could be heard from the garage. A loud sucking sound overlaid that for an instant and the rumble vanished.
Emilia sighed and closed the laptop, giving up as it fuzzed out a third time. She whistled and watched as Hedwig appeared from somewhere in the house and alighted on the back of the sofa next to her, she hooted quietly, and turned her head as Em reached up to run her hand along her feathers. "What do you want on your pizza, Harriet?" she asked as she gestured in the air and a sheet of parchment and a self-inking quill appeared from nowhere.
"What about Sirius?" Harriet said, frowning slightly as she looked up the stairs towards where she knew he was, somehow.
Emilia laughed softly, as a brief memory of some other time and some other boy crossed her mind. "You'll learn that the boys, will eat what you tell them to..."
Harriet considered her point for a moment, not sure that she really agreed and shrugged, "Pepperoni and pineapple," Emilia crooked an eyebrow and Harriet shrugged again, "Mum likes it."
Emilia smiled and shook her head as she wrote the order on the parchment, tied it to Hedwig's leg as she hoped down to her lap and bent down, kissing the Familiar's head. Hedwig hooted at her and took flight, passing through a hatch that appeared and disappeared in the front door as she flew out into the evening.
*******************************London**********************************
11:20 pm
A large, black motorcycle bearing a pair of passengers roared down a dark street and pulled up to a stop. Loud, pumping music blared out into the night from an open, red-lit door. A large neon sign, hanging low over the door provided nearly the only illumination for the street, casting blood-red light down over the long lines of often provocatively-dressed young men and women waiting to get into the club.
The sign pulsed, sending red, liquid light down, shining off a black, mirror-faced helmet as the woman riding the back of the bike, swung her leg over, dismounted the bike and paused an instant to fix her skirt, before removing her helmet and setting it down on the seat she had just vacated. She shook her head, sending waves of curls to fall back over her spine, and looked back to find her partner slipping from the front seat and pocketing a set of keys.
He settled a long, black leather duster around his frame and looked over, a pair of lenses catching the light of the street oddly, before he started across the street, not bothering to look as she followed automatically.
They moved past the crowd, to a mixture of wolf-whistles and jeers, and stepped to the twin bouncers standing at the entrance, passing judgment on who entered and who did not. The rightmost one looked at them, he swallowed very slightly, "Go on in."
Hermione smiled and patted his cheek as her and Harry slipped past, walking into the club, under the neon sign, which held the logo, Bram's along with a large, red droplet. The first bouncer's partner turned to him, after waving in a young blonde wearing a skirt that covered almost nothing, "Who the bloody hell were they?" A faint hint of fang showed in the bloody lighting as he opened his mouth.
"Trust me...you don't want to know."
The music, as they stepped through what was actually a partially effective Silencing Charm, hammered at their ears, fading away as Hermione muttered a spell under her breath and took Harry's hand, leading him through the crowds packing the large, East End club. The room as they slipped across the edge of the crowded dance floor, was currently filled with a mixture of Muggles and unknown to them, at least a half dozen variants of magical creatures, dancing to a twenty-year-old Aerosmith song, was red-lit, with periodic strobes flashes of color. The ceiling, low and hanging with a chain-link fence seemed oddly appropriate, as if securing the crowd...or keeping it from getting away. Hermione looked over as a short, well-endowed redhead slipped out of the crowd at the edge of the dance floor and started to move against Harry. Hermione glared, and a beat later the young Muggle paled, as a sudden urge to be elsewhere filled her thoughts.
Harry smirked over at Hermione and she squeezed his hand tighter, pulling them along until they reached the packed bar. Harry turned slightly and held up a pair of fingers, catching two green, glass bottles as they slid down the bar and handed one to Hermione. He took a drink, leaning back against the bar and looked out over the crowd, one hand automatically wrapping around her waist as she leaned back against him. He frowned slightly, looking into a dark corner, and proving to himself, once again, that Muggles really did not pay attention to what was right under their noses.
A petite blond was curled up in the lap of a dark-haired, alabaster-skinned man in a corner booth. His lips were down on the girl's neck, and his hands were down on her bum, pushing her skirt up to almost her hips as she writhed on his lap. Only the thin trickle of spilled blood slipping down her throat, and down between her breasts showed what was really going on. He glanced over at Hermione's eyes, and she shrugged, neither of them moving, as both could tell the girl was a Familiar, a willing partner.
A quick scan of the club, as their eyes became slightly unfocused and the world changed, becoming a slightly dimmer world filled with brightly glowing outlines, found at least another fifteen vampires, twenty werewolves and what Harry half thought was a succubus in the corner, surrounded by a crowd of young Muggles. What do you think? Hermione took a sip of her beer and ground back against him to the music, causing him to groan and a soft laugh to come from her throat. Minx, Harry accused lovingly, bending forward and sweeping her fall of hair to the side before nuzzling lightly on the juncture of her throat and neck.
She reached up and back with her free hand, wrapping her arm behind his neck to hold him in place. A hell of a lot of vamps and weres, too many Muggles and no back up...about normal really. She paused and sighed quietly, letting herself enjoy him nuzzling her neck before she returned to business and took another drink of her beer, I have no problem with confronting them, not really, but there would be a lot of work for the Obliviators.
Harry nodded, considering the situation they found themselves in. During the Voldemort War, weres had been split, between those supporting Voldemort, most of those in fear of Fenrir Greyback until his timely death at Hermione's hands, and those who had desperately tried to stay out of it. Only perhaps a dozen or so weres had fought on the side of the light, most notably the current Chief Auror. It was not that the average werewolf, or tiger or bear, or whatever, were evil, most in fact were average, normal people who happened to have an affliction that affected them once or twice a month, but that the years and years of discrimination and hatred against them by those in power at the Ministry and the Prophet and other institutions, along with the general European prejudice against them had driven a wedge deep into their hearts. Most would never, despite the highly visible examples of Remus Lupin and a few others that had obtained their posts in the Ministry and society since Arthur Weasley's ascension, work for those who had treated them as little better than House Elves had historically been treated.
The true owners of the club, however, were slipping here and there, the slightly haughty looking ones dancing, or sitting at the dim edges of the club, usually with one or more Muggles or Wizards attending to them. Vampires, despite Voldemort's entireties, had stayed out of the last war, mostly. A few mercenaries had been used at points to ambush Order members and Aurors, but for the most part they had kept to themselves, preferring to wait and see who won.
For they had never, really, believed the stories that Albus Dumbledore was dead. The Phoenix Wizard had held oaths and treaties with many of the clans and families, and debts of Honor with still more. The ones now, stuck to the covenants, keeping their predations to a minimum and taking only willing Familiars. At least most of them did. A rumor had come across Harry's desk, late last week, of a series of disappearances near the club...of young Muggles and Wizards vanishing, and later being sighted, but only at night.
Harry looked up as a tall, thin man with ash-blonde hair and faintly violet eyes appeared at his shoulder. "Deirdre will see you now." Hermione looked up and back at Harry and he nodded. She pushed off him without seeming to move, and glided after the undead messenger that moved through the crowd like an icebreaker through the artic, parting the ways for them.
They slipped along the edge of the dance floor, moving towards a roped-off set of couches set in the furthest corner of the club from the door. The crowd surged and waned around the corner, approaching, but never quite making it as far as the pair of somberly-dressed, large men with suspicious bulges under their dark suit jackets. Hermione did not break stride as she slipped between them, sensing their lycan nature in passing.
Hermione passed through an invisible ward, not reacting in the slightest as a faint tingle danced down her spine, and the loud music and noise from the club faded to an almost unnoticeable murmur. A second pair of bodyguards, these were actually guards and not the thugs so common these days, stepped in her path as she stalked towards the red-leather couch in which a dark-haired woman could be seen lounging, a blonde-haired young man laying on the couch next to her. "Your hardware stays with us," the taller of the pair said lowly, glancing at Harry as he came up behind Hermione. His fangs glinted in the light of the club, retracted though they were, as he spoke, his eyes never stopping moving.
"No," Harry said simply and made a tiny gesture, freezing the Vampire in place. His partner dove under his suit, going for a wand, and Hermione MOVED, spinning around him, her elbow flickered, and he crumpled to the ground at her feet. She dropped his wand on him and looked over at a low, chuckle.
"Let them pass, Jean," a silky, low feminine voice reached their ears, carrying without seeming to come from anywhere. The woman waved languidly, motioning to the couch in front of hers. Glittering, cold, dark eyes watched as Hermione sat on the black leather couch directly in front of hers, Harry took a silent post behind Hermione, his hands on the back of the couch on either side of her head. The dark eyes slowly panned down as Hermione crossed her legs, letting her skirt creep up enough to show the majority of a black, dragonhide holster holding a flat, black handgun riding in tandem with her wand.
"That is not really necessary, Hermione..." the dark-haired woman smirked, her lips parting enough to show a pair of needle-sharp fangs jutting down just enough to be noticeable. "We are all, peaceful here," she looked up at Harry, and the tip of a pink tongue ran over the tips of her fangs, "Wouldn't you be more comfortable with your...wife?" She stretched very slightly, almost unnoticeably, just enough to call attention to herself. A blood-red dress painted her curves, flowing down from a band around her neck, leaving her arms bare. A long slit ran up the side of the skirt, going all the way to her hip, calling attention to a black garter hidden there.
"Very possibly," he replied, ignoring Deirdre's pair of followers that came to stand on either side of him a pace or two back. "However, I am rather attached to my blood, and even more to hers...I would hate for there to be an...accident."
"Are you...sure..." a tendril of compulsion underlayed her words as she slowly played with the blonde's hair next to her. She crossed her legs, and the skirt parted enough to expose her leg to her hip.
"Absolutely," he replied.
Hermione licked her lips slightly and leaned back against the couch, spreading her arms along the top of it. "You know why we are here, Deirdre," she said, her head cocking to the side. She looked around the room, and glanced over as a bartender set a wineglass of a rather opaque red liquid in front of Deirdre on a low coffee table, along with a more normal-looking red for Hermione.
"Yes," she said, leaning forward to retrieve her glass. She leaned back and slowly ran one slender finger around the rim of the glass before taking a slow sip. Her dark eyes flared violet for an instant, "I had heard...there were tragedies about..." she took another drink of the slightly steaming liquid, "I, of course, have only heard about them."
"Of course," Hermione responded with a faint smile, as she leaned forward and plucked up the glass before her. She held the vampires' eye as she took a slow sip, and held the glass before her in both hands. "However, it seems to your advantage to pass on any information that may, purely through happenstance, come to your attention."
The Vampiress, looked at Hermione for a long moment, her companion stirred next to her and she ran her fingers through his hair fondly before looking up at Hermione, her voice chilling, "I am five hundred years old, childe. I had box seats at the Globe, I watched Cromwell march on London, and I have lived through the last five Dark Lords, I have seen wizards come and go. You are mere children to me..."
Harry's eyes glittered behind clear lenses, "And you are merely another annoyance to me. I do not take threats to me and mine lightly," a pair of additional vampires and a were slipped from the shadows and started towards him. A faint, shimmering wall appeared, and all three bounded back as they hit the wall.
Deirdre smiled slowly and laughed, almost musically, "I like you, Harry, are you sure that you wouldn't like to come with me to my chambers," she looked to Hermione and added, her voice oddly inviting, "Hermione is welcome as well, I always find that three is adequate."
"Some other time, Deirdre...though if I were to share my husband, there is one I would rather do so with, no offense," Hermione replied, smiling graciously. She ignored the question flitting across the back of her thoughts at her words." Deirdre just shrugged and took another sip of blood. "Now that the ritual insults, threats, and offers of infidelity have been exchanged," she said, "what can you tell us?"
Deirdre reached forward and touched a small, faceted stone sitting on the coffee table. She stroked it with one finger and a shimmering cone descended from the ceiling, fully cutting off the sound from the rest of the club, forcing back her bodyguards. They turned outward, watching the club as a whole, "I do like you...and Albus did me a great favor in Victoria's time, and my granddaughter...she was a friend of your son's namesake..." She watched outward as the lights changed, and even more dancers filled the floor. One of her coven took the hand of a tall, brunette and led her from the floor, "We stayed out of the war, I am an elder of our kind, there are few older than me...we tend to die through misadventure or to run afoul of a slayer, long before my age, to step across the line because we are bored."
She took a breath she did not really need, "There has always been a gap in our society, between those born to this life and those turned to it...the turned ones do not always wish to follow the rules that our elders have laid down...ones that we have established to, frankly, keep yourselves or those like you from knocking on our doors in the middle of the day. We have always known that we could not win a war to the fang...we could kill many of you, yes, but we would be destroyed in the end. It is to that end that we limit the numbers we turn, and for the most part, we do not kill."
"What has happened?" Harry asked, leaning slightly on the back of the couch.
"There is a group that has openly broken from our councils, most of them young, less than a hundred or so, but with at least five elders, perhaps a few more. They have begun turning at a rate not seen since the dark ages, and feeding indiscriminately. Since the days that the Church sent out its slayers after us. They were nothing to us, insects in their Muggle abilities, but they were many, and we were driven underground. We do not know why they have chosen this course, one that will set them in conflict with the guardians." She touched the stone again, and the dampening field vanished, "That is all we know, or that I am permitted to share, for now."
Hermione stood, recognizing that the audience was at an end, "Thank you." She took paced around the couch, and started back towards the main part of the club, Harry falling in at her side with decades of practice. She reached up and patted one of the bodyguards as she passed, handing him back a wand that he had not even noticed he had lost.
After a few steps, when they reached the crowd, she took his hand lightly, and let him take the lead, leading them both towards the entrance and the dark street beyond. Well, Harry? she asked, as they stepped out into the cool, London early morning, now. She gave the bouncer that had let them in a nod, and followed Harry across the street to his bike.
Hermione froze suddenly and looked up as the street at both ends filled with silent bipedal forms. A chunk of brick hurled out of the darkness, impacting the neon sign and shattering it in a rain of sparks. The red glow died, leaving the street as black as the darkest pit. Hermione, Harry said, a conversation in one word. A loud, unrecognizable word came from one of the unknown interlopers and a large, silver moon bloomed several hundred feet up, competing with a crescent moon hanging low in the sky.
Hermione slipped to the center of the street, facing towards one group as she felt Harry at her back facing the other way. Eerie howls filled the London night as the shapes at either end of the street SHIFTED growing, changing, until the street was filled with snarling, growling, wolf-like creatures, standing on two legs.
Hermione glanced back at Harry, as her hand darted under her skirt, coming up with her sidearm and bringing it up in a two-handed grip. Harry's coat flared out as a pair of dull black pistols filled his hands. He took a half step back, stopping as his back touched Hermione's.
A loud, single howl echoed in the night, echoed by another then another, until every were was repeating the call. Harry took a breath, the sound loud in his ear...and they charged. Almost twenty wolves tore down on them, running along the streets, bounding along the sideways and in the case of a few, running right along the sides of the buildings.
Take 'em, Harry snapped and the crackle of gunfire filled the night, cutting over the growls and howls of the wolves. Harry tracked right, and the bright flashes of the sunlight ammo interspaced with the loud, terrible hissing of silver, as the tore into the wolves charging him, came to his ears. A pair of wolves fell away, whimpering for a moment, before they stopped, permanently, as Harry tracked to another pair, dropping both of them with neat headshots.
Behind him, Hermione tapped single, neat shots, dropping one, then a second, then a third wolf. She fired at a fourth, missing, and the sun-bright claps of light as the every-other anti-vamp round hit the cobblestones caused her to blink rapidly. Her vision came back, just in time to see another wolf leaping out of the darkness, just in time to send it flying back through the air with a hard wave of her hand. She spun, firing three more rounds in a tight group to an upright were. It screamed horribly as two of the silver nitrate rounds spread through its body and it fell away, convulsing. The slide locked back on her gun and she let it fall away, I'm dry, Harry. Hermione reached back under her jacket and a pair of familiar friends filled her hands, the blades growing to two feet in length.
She heard the sound of another pair of triple taps, Me too, Harry replied, sliding the pair of pistols back into their holsters under his coat, and reaching up and back. A flare of light bloomed as the Sword of Gryffindor filled his hand, and he came down into a low, point-trailing guard.
The remaining wolves, ten out of the twenty that had originally appeared, slowly filled into a snarling, pacing circle around them, just out of pouncing distance. Harry's eyes moved, tracking behind his glasses, scanning the five wolves in front of him, even as a ghostly image floated over the top of that, Hermione's vision overlaying his own. He blinked and Hermione's sight faded from his own, "You can leave now," Harry barked out over the street, banking at least some of them had taken Wolfsbane and were not beyond understanding him. There were those, of course, like Remus who could transform without the benefit of the moon or a spell, who retained their minds after the transformation, but most of them were Alphas, pack leaders, and would not have been here, at least not in the attack.
Not to his surprise, the growling redoubled, and Harry settled his grip on the Sword. He felt Hermione ready herself, a tingling along his spine as magic filled the air, and their very bones, spilling out into the night in emerald glows. "You won't win," Hermione went on, her silver blades glinting in the light from the false moon, "we don't particularly want to kill you..."
A single were, bigger by half than the rest, stepped forward towards Harry. He howled once, then looked at Harry with rather human-looking, intelligence in his eyes. "You will die, Potter," the words twisted by inhuman lips, he howled again and the wolves charged.
Harry flipped to the side, dodging the charge of the were who had spoken and slashed his free hand though the air. A wall of fire snapped into place, cutting off the wolves from them. Harry dove under a slash of claws and rolled to his feet, flipping backwards as jaws snapped for his throat. The were roared and leapt, Harry dropped to a knee, spinning, and flicked the sword up and left. The roar cut off in mid-sound as two pieces of wolf fell away.
Behind him Hermione spun as a pair of wolves dove through the flames, she flicked her left hand and one were died with a whimper as a silvered dagger lodged in his brain. She hopped sideways as the other snapped at her leg, swiped with a claw, "Fuck," she hissed as a burning spike of pain bloomed in her leg and she felt wetness flowing down her leg. The wolf leapt, Diffindo Sparsi Argentium... a cloud of silver darts shot from her dagger, shredding the wolf in mid-air. She stepped to the side, and watched as the remains floated oh-so-slowly past.
A new howl, from an unknown throat rent the air, and then, sudden silence. Harry glanced over to Hermione and waved his hand, vanishing the flames, to find that the remainder of the wolves had vanished into the dim night. Harry looked around slowly, took a breath, and a faintly visible pulse of magic snapped out into the darkness, searching.
He relaxed, sheathing the sword with an irritated faint growl as he stalked over to Hermione. "You're hurt," he muttered as he caught the faint glimmer of blood on Hermione's leg.
"I'll live," she replied quietly, reaching up and running her fingers along his cheek for a moment. She reached into a pocket of his jacket and fished out a mirror, and flipped it open one-handed, turning around and letting Harry hold her up.
Lazy, Harry whispered and she grinned for an instant before the look fell away.
"Bookworm to central," Hermione said into the mirror, and waited as her image swirled, to be replaced with the head of an earnest-looking young, sandy-haired man in dark blue robes. "Do you have my location?" she asked before he could open his mouth, and received a puzzled nod. "Good, send a clean-up team here," she glanced over to see that several of the bodies had already started to change back into their human forms, naked pale skin glowed in the light from the real moon, the fake having vanished with the rest of the wolves. "We have thirteen weres, deceased, and possibly some Muggles to Obliviate." Harry gave her a nod as he resheathed his wand, having cast a Confundus to convince any Muggles in the area that they needed to stay close until the Obliviators got here to interview them and modify their memories accordingly.
"Yes, ma'am," the young MLE dispatcher replied, "do you need Healer support?"
Harry glared at her mildly as she shook her head, "No, we'll be fine. Send a forensics team as well, we would like to see if there is any particular pack affiliation to them." Hermione looked around the street, seeing the bouncers from the club stepping out onto the street. She sighed faintly, "That is all," the MLE dispatcher nodded and his image vanished.
A beat later, six wizards in white robes appeared with soft CRACKs of Apparition. Five of them went immediately to the weres, with one scrutinizing the alley, shaking his head. Spotting Harry and Hermione, he started towards them as the rest began investigating the scene. One of the forensic team stood back and started snapping shots with a Wizarding camera, lighting the street with white flashes as another started running a green, scanning beam from his wand over the bodies.
Their leader, a short wizard with a salt and pepper beard and hair stopped in front of them and frowned. He looked back towards the rest, pointedly, before turning back to Harry and Hermione, "Can you two, ever, leave a neat scene?" Wendel Homes, head of the Forensic Branch sighed tiredly.
"Sorry," Harry replied almost sheepishly. "What are you doing working this time of night? You are the Head of Forensics, remember?"
"What are the heads of Field Ops doing in the middle of a dark street at Midnight?" he countered and Harry and Hermione both shrugged. He snorted, "Elie's visiting the grandkids, Sara starts Hogwarts this year, they were going shopping in the morning, so I came into work to catch up on paperwork. I overheard the call and tagged along." He scrambled under his robes for a notebook, and scribbled down their names, and badge numbers from memory, "We had to call in Obliviators off the on-call list, the ones working were called away to Brighton, some kids were flying their brooms over a golf course with lit wands, had UFO calls coming in all night."
"Brilliant," Hermione said. "We need to see who these weres were, see if you can find any glyphs or anything that would either point them to a specific pack or perhaps a Vampire master...this was a touch convenient."
He frowned, and ran his fingers along his beard. He walked over to the nearest were, the one that Harry had cut down, with Harry and Hermione following. He reached into a pocket of his robes, and found a pair of purple nitrile gloves and slipped them on. He knelt next to the body and turned the head, he pushed dark hair up off the nape of its neck. He found a burnt, mottled patch of skin and looked back up at the Potters. "Looks as if he had a marking, but someone burned it off with silver."
Harry nodded, his expression not revealing his annoyance, "Let us know, we are heading home, should be into the office in the morning." Homes gave a preoccupied nod and turned back to the body, pulling his wand out from his sleeve and running it slowly over the body. He looked up as he heard the roar of the Harley starting, and watched with a small frown as it left, speeding into the night. He had not bothered to mention the cut on Hermione's leg; he knew that they would have only brushed him off anyway.
He stood, grimacing as his back popped faintly and looked at the rest of the team with him, "Oi, Terry, call in and get another team out here." A blonde woman nodded and started talking lowly into a mirror, "I really need a holiday."
A/N: And there you go. I hope you liked the touch of Underworld there, though the pistols are the most logical
means for sending silver downrange without tapping into their own magics. And if you hadn't figured it out,
trophy room is inspired from Stephy's La collezione, you can check it
out in the PK Gallery
Next chapter we will meet a new character and gasp, she's even not from England...directly anyway. Her dad is
though. Also Luna's dad will actually make an appearance, and we will finally catch up to Draco and Ginny...SeYa
then.