The Trio Who Returned

Chapter 14

by Technomad

The next night, when the trio arose from their coffins, Harry said "We should tell Professor McGonagall about what's happened. She'll want to know."

The wish was father to the deed; the Floo was soon burning, and Harry knelt down to call their former teacher. "Professor McGonagall? We've got good news to report."

"Well, come on through! I want to hear this!"

When Professor McGonagall heard all about what they'd done to Voldemort, she turned pale, but smiled. "I can't approve of torturing anyone…even him…but I can't really blame you. He made your lives a misery for years."

Professor Snape, sitting in a corner, chimed in with: "Last night my Dark Mark faded and disappeared. If you did miss any Death Eaters, they'll be hard to find now."

Hermione smiled, showing her fangs, and both teachers shuddered. "Oh, I don't think we missed any. We were pretty thorough." She stretched luxuriously, like a satisfied cat.

"Any that we missed are insignificant enough not to worry us, and if they come to our attention…" Ron's grin would have frightened anybody. "Well, we can deal with them the way we dealt with their friends."

"You speak so casually of killing people. What happened to the sweet gentle children I used to know?" mourned McGonagall. "I remember your Sortings. You were so eager, so young…"

"Children grow up, Professor. You of all people should know that." Harry's voice was flat.

"And, speaking of children," said McGonagall, "there are some people here who want to see you." She rang a small bell, and the door opened, to reveal Arthur and Molly Weasley. Behind them, Ginny Weasley came in. Ron, Harry and Hermione all gasped in shock. McGonagall and Snape discreetly left the room, clearly not feeling that such an intimate moment was suitable for them.

"Did you think we'd forgotten you?" asked Arthur. "You dropped out of sight so completely! We were worried sick!"

"Oh, my dears, you all look so pale! Have you been eating right?" sobbed Molly. "I kept picturing you, lost, hungry, unable to take care of yourselves…"

Harry and his friends exchanged glances. "Uh, Mum…we have some news for you," Ron began. "I don't think you're going to like to hear about it…"

Ron had been exactly right. The news did not please either of his parents. Molly reacted first, while Arthur sat there, paralyzed with shock.

"I don't care! You're still my littlest boy! I want you to come home with me!"

Ron gave his friends a helpless look. They shrugged their shoulders, refusing to take sides between him and his parents. He left with them, and once they had Flooed back to the Burrow, Harry and Hermione both felt as though part of themselves had been taken away.

Now that her parents were gone, Ginny clearly felt that the coast was clear. She threw herself into Harry's arms. Harry gave Hermione a horrified look and tried to disentangle himself from the redhead. "Ginny! You know what we are, don't you?"

"Yes! And I don't care! I want to be with you! Always!" She gave him a rather wild-eyed smile. "You have no idea of how jealous I was, you off in the wild doing extraordinary things while I was kept at home! What's Hermione got that I haven't got?" Hermione sniffed rather disdainfully and left; Harry wasn't happy that she had gone, but didn't know how to keep her there.

"These." Harry opened his mouth, showing Ginny how his fangs extruded and retracted at his will. Ginny's eyes went wide, and then she threw her head to one side, tearing open the top of her high-necked robe to expose her shapely, white neck.

"If that's what it takes, Harry, then that's what it takes! Take me! Turn me! I'm yours! Body and soul, I'm yours!"

Harry had not fed very recently, and the red thirst was strong. It grew stronger still as the scent of her filled his nostrils. He could smell her skin, redolent of soap and healthy girl, and beneath that, the odor of her blood, and his fangs ached in his jaws. His eyes went red, and he bent down to take Ginny and make her one of his own kind.

Then another vision flashed into his mind. Ginny, trapped eternally at age seventeen, having to watch as her beloved family all died, her classmates became wives and mothers, and she lingered on, as though she'd been preserved in amber. Ginny, ending up out of her time, prowling the night in a society in which she now no longer had a place, eventually succumbing to the terrible temptations that beset him and his friends every single night and becoming a predator as bad as any Death Eater.

He threw her away from him with all his strength. "No…" he whispered, as Ginny stared at him uncomprehendingly. "NO!" Ginny stepped forward, and Harry shrank away as though she were wielding a crucifix or garlic. "Get away from me! Get away!"

"But, Harry…" Ginny's eyes welled with tears. That was all it took. Harry turned and hurled himself through the window, heedless of the glass shattering; he knew that he would repair himself instantly when he shifted shape, and once he was in bat form, he flew away from Hogwarts as hard as he could, trying vainly to not hear the sobs of a heartbroken girl who loved him more than he felt he had ever deserved.

Back at Grimmauld Place, Harry shifted back into human form and scrambled in through one of the upstairs windows. He ran downstairs, and found Ron sitting in the living room, looking as though he were staring into Hell.

"Ron…I nearly sank my fangs into Ginny tonight!" Ron just looked at him, not really seeing him. "Ron! Did you hear what I said?"

Ron said "When we got back home, Mum offered me her neck. She said 'I fed you from my breast when you were a baby, and I see no difference between that and this. Come and drink!' I nearly took her up on it, before I remembered what we are and got out of there." Ron's voice was an uninflected monotone, very unlike his usual lively delivery. "I can drink from bad people. I can drink from Death Eaters. But this, I cannot do!"

"Ginny wants to be one of us," Harry replied. He sank into a chair, holding his head in his hands. "She's so innocent! She doesn't realize what being 'like us' entails!"

"And it gets worse," said Hermione, who had apparently been elsewhere in the house when Harry returned. "The other vampires have found out about us, and they want us to swear allegiance to one or another of their leaders. They have political feuds that make the worst Muggle or wizard ones look like nothing much, and since they're all but immortal, those go on for centuries! They're refighting the Wars of the Roses, those that aren't still bitter over the wars between Stephen and Matilda!" For a second, she grinned mirthlessly. "The bad blood, if you'll pardon the phrase, between Norman and English vampires was only patched up a few decades ago!"

They looked at each other for a few minutes. Ron finally broke the silence. "I never fancied being a Hogwarts ghost," he said slowly. "But this looks like being a whole order of magnitude worse!"

"And how long will it be before we get so separated from the human race as to see them as nothing but cattle for us to feed upon? We've centuries ahead of us at least, and more and more, our human lives will disappear into the distance. Have you ever met a really, really old vampire? They're such creatures of habit that they keep on doing things long after they even know why they're doing them. They just know that things must be done thus-and-so, and so they do them. What goes on in their minds?"

"I'm afraid that it may be time for us to say farewell," Harry said sadly. "The world has no more need for us. The Boy-Who-Lived carried out the mission he was born to fulfill, and his work is done. I'll not be too sorry to go, either. My parents will be glad to see me. That is, if I get to go where they are."

"Where you go, we go!" Ron said, as Hermione vigorously nodded agreement. "I don't want to become a monster, and this is not the life I wanted for myself!"

"But how do we do it?" asked Hermione. "Get Dobby to stake us in our coffins?" She shuddered. "I don't know about that. The instructions on how to kill vampires vary, and I wouldn't want it to be bungled."

"I've an idea!" Ron began to explain, and the other two nodded their agreement as he told them what he had come up with.

They had made their arrangements. A note had been placed for McGonagall to find, with their instructions about what to do. All that was left was to wait.

"Well...I have to say, it's been a long, strange trip," commented Hermione. She sat with her two friends on the Quidditch pitch. To the east, the sky was turning from blue to orange. The sun would be up soon.

"I know. I couldn't have done it without you two," Harry answered. He reached over and patted Hermione's hand. "You two...you're the best mates anybody could wish for. You've made it all worthwhile."

"I could wish we'd had longer together," mused Ron, looking toward the east. "Right now, every instinct I have is screaming at me to run away, find cover...but I know that that's the wrong thing to do."

"We're too dangerous to live, Ron," Hermione answered, her voice thick with the tears her pride forbade her to shed. "And if we don't do this, we'll go from bad to worse."

"I've fulfilled my destiny, and I'm at peace," Harry murmured. "If things had been different, Ginny and I...but there's no need to speculate on what-might-have-been."

By that time, the sun was peeking over the horizon, and their world was bathed in orange light.

When Minerva McGonagall walked into her office, she found a note waiting for her. As she read it, her face paled.

She found them on the Quidditch pitch. They were lying there, huddled close together. They looked completely untouched; if anything, they looked better than they ever had in life. She knelt beside them and ran a few diagnostic spells she'd learned from Madam Pomfrey, as well as checking their pulses and shining lights into their eyes.

When she was sure that life was extinct, she conjured up a chair and sat down beside them. Hagrid and Filch would be there in a little while, to do the needful, but she wanted some time alone. Some time to grieve in peace, before notifying the world that the Boy Who Lived lived no more.

Epilogue

Long after these events, a certain corner of the Hogsmeade cemetery was avoided by all sensible people, particularly after dark. Anybody who had to go near shuddered and carried apotropaic amulets as protection from evil.

In that corner, in a shady grove of hawthorn trees, stood a tomb. The walls were made of blocks of fieldstone, and the roof was a single slab of stone. The front door was sealed with a slab, and covered with an iron gate. All around the tomb, wild roses grew profusely, twining around every inch of its surface.

On the door, deeply carved, were these words:

Harry James Potter, Born July 31, 1980. Entered Rest May 31, 1998

Ronald Bilius Weasley, Born March 1, 1980. Entered Rest, May 31, 1998

Hermione Jean Granger, Born September 19, 1979. Entered Rest, May 31, 1998

Holders of the Order of Merlin, First Class (posthumous)

All Gave Some

They Gave All

Gods Grant They Lie Still

Below the inscription, a red-and-yellow Gryffindor scarf was knotted on the gate. Nobody knew how, or who had put it there, but it never seemed to fade.

THE END?