Chapter Two
That night when they believed everyone else in the house to be asleep, Harry, Ron, and Hermione gathered up in Ron's room on the top floor.
"Are they all asleep?" Harry asked.
"I believe so. At the least, they're all in their rooms, and it's late enough that we won't be bothered," Hermione said.
"Have you brought the book?" Harry asked.
"I have it here," Hermione said, holdng up a rather worn copy of Curses and Countercurses by Professor Vindictus Viridian.
"And I have mine," Harry said, gesturing to a pile of those old school books he thought might help. In his stack , there were: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection, Break With a Banshee, Gadding with Ghouls, Holidays with Hags, Travels with Trolls, Voyages with Vampires, Wandering with Werewolves, The Monster Book of Monsters, The Dark Arts Outsmarted, and Confronting the Faceless.
"Right, well, shouldn't we make a list first," Hermione pointed out.
Harry quickly retrieved a long piece of parchment.
"Well, she's pale," Ron began.
"She doesn't go out in the sunlight," Harry said.
"But why? Is she afraid of it?" Ron asked rhetorically.
"She said we wouldn't be able to see her if she took the cloak off...So she can't go out in the sunlight!" Harry said.
"What else?"
"She acts really old," Ron said.
"Her eyes are black," Hermione said.
"Her lips are super red," Harry said.
"She has really good hearing...What if she's awake and can hear us?" Hermione said, dropping to a whisper.
"Just whisper," Harry said.
"Okay...well, she's beautiful, but scary," Ron whispered.
"She never showed her teeth!" Hermione stage whispered in sudden realization.
"Did you see the way Mom greeted her?" Ron whispered, going over his memory of her coming.
"They've known each other for a long time," Hermione said quietly.
"But how can that be when I've never seen her? She can't be that much older than us!" Harry whispered.
"Unless she's older than she looks," Ron suggested.
"But how much older?" Hermione asked.
The three of them looked over their list in silence for awhile.
Hermione finally broke the silence by saying, "It's not a curse."
"Then what is she?" Harry asked.
"We'll have to wait and see," Hermione said with a shrug.
oooooooooooooooooooo
Over the next couple days, Harry, Ron, and Hermione watched Tenebre as closely as they could without arousing suspicion. In that time, they noticed several more odd things about her. Her eye sight was very good, almost inhumanly so. She was disturbingly fast, though all they had seen was humanly possible. The familiarity and almost fondness the adults of the Burrow showed to Tenebre did not wane. If anything, it increased over time. Mrs. Weasley doted on her like a daughter, which led to another of their clues. Never once did Mrs. Weasley offer tea or any type of food to Tenebre. Not only that but none of them had seen her eat anything since she arrived. Ron had, however, seen her drink a glass of red wine.
The final and most noticeable clue was the extreme respect all of the adults (Mr. Weasley, Mrs. Weasley, and Lupin) with which they treated Tenebre. It was strange that they could so greatly respect one of so young an age. At another late night meeting, though not so lengthy as the first, the three decided to ask the adults about if nothing else the reason for their respect.
And so, the three teens quickly contrived a way to be alone in a room with those same three adults. Once there, Harry asked them, "Why do you all respect Tenebre so much?"
Lupin's eyes flicked to them in suspicion. How could they possibly know? Mr. Weasley spoke then, asking, "Why do you ask?"
The three of them looked amongst each other. After a few seconds, Harry bit the bullet and said, "Whenever she walks into the room, you all quiet down..."
"It's like she's royalty," Ron added.
"She isn't so much royalty as...a respected elder..." Mr. Weasley attempted to explain. He had chosen his words carefully, but not carefully enough.
"Elder? She can't be more than five years older than us!" Ron exclaimed.
"She's a vampire," Hermione and Lupin said at the same time.
All three adults looked at her in astonishment. Then, Lupin, in a statement which echoed her discovery of his own condition, asked, "How long have you known?"
Apparently, Hermione did not notice the similarity because she said without hesitation, "Since the meeting during the day last week. She avoided the sunlight like the plague."
Lupin nodded as he pursed his lips. "Obviously, she's considerably older than she looks...But a reason for our respect is...she was in the same year as You-Know-Who."
"But she isn't British. She's Italian. Why wouldn't she go to that one magic school in Florence?" Harry asked.
"Actually, I was schooled in Rome at IlCollegio di Magia by Maestri della Magia Antica. It was only in my final year of study that I went to Hogwarts. That was both my last year and the last year of a certain Tom Riddle, Jr.," Tenebre said from the doorway. They all turned in astonishment ot see her leaning against the wall in the shadows. Her deathly pale skin shone like a corpse.
"Tenebre! We were just-" Mr. Weasley began to say.
"Giving out my history freely to three whom I would have thought would be well acquainted with it by now," she finished. Her voice was eerily devoid of emotion. "However, the question remains: why did you not come to me directly?"
"Really? No offense, but you're kind of scary," Ron interjected.
"Ron!" Hermione reprimanded sharply.
"What he means is that...you're rather..." Harry began, attempting to save his friend.
"Intimidating?" she suggested with a smile that seemed to shine despite the lack of light.
"Yeah," Ron said with a rather vigorous nod.
"It is only natural. Despite that, I am sure-" As she continued to speak, she pushed away from the wall and walked toward Ron. However, the second she stepped into the sun, she disappeared in a black, swirling cloud. The whole time she continued to speak.
"You have questions for me. However, I encourage you to think carefully before you speak."
Through all of this, the trio of teenagers stared, hardly able to believe their eyes. At the same time, the adults seemed completely used to this rather unique occurrence.
As she had not reappeared and her cloud had disappeared, the three peered unsurely around the room. After a couple seconds, Harry asked cautiously, "Is she still here?"
Lupin looked up from staring at his hands. "Draw the curtains."
Hermione and Harry hurried to comply. As they did, Harry asked, "Will she reappear?"
"If she's here, she will," Lupin said, already peering around the room.
When the curtains were drawn, long shadows appeared throughout the room. Light shone through the open doorways on either side of the room, but Tenebre did not reappear.
"She's gone," Lupin said.