Chapter 2
September 3rd…
The three sisters departed from the vampiric village that had been their home for the past ten years with a trunk in the hand of each unique young women. As they looked back towards the village one last time, memories began to play inside their head; good, bad, happy, sad… it was all just one big blur for all them.
Zareh pushed back the tears that were beginning to form in her brown-blue eyes as she began to walk further over the hill away from it.
"Come on you four," she stated, including the wolf. "We've got a Muggle plane to catch that will take us to England so we can go to the school."
Vala let her own tears slowly fall down her cheeks as she slowly turned around and followed her older sister towards the closest Muggle city. She had to strap her large, feathered wings to her back with a special belt that buckled up above and below her slightly large chest as to not let anyone see her wings, meaning she had to wear slightly baggier clothes then she could normally wear. Like now, she had on a pair of black pants, her high boots, a loose T-shirt with a baggy black sweater over it and a long black traveling cloak over that. Vala was looking through books and books of potions, trying to find a potion to get rid of her wings until a full moon, but she had been having no such luck so far.
Raelin, however, sank to the ground and began to sob loudly. Ranger put his head on her shoulder sympathetically and nudged her with his nose to get up.
"It's okay, Rae." Zareh said quietly, helping her blind sister up once more. "We'll come back every holiday we can, I promise."
Raelin sniffed and looked to her oldest sister. "It's not just that we're leaving our home again." The young werewolf said quietly, wiping her tear stained cheeks with her sleeve. "It's the fact that I'm leaving a place that I've never seen before."
"It's going to be okay, Rae." Zareh reassured her youngest sister. "One day we'll get all the ingredients for the potion and you'll have the best day of your life."
"Promise?" Raelin questioned, sounding like a little girl again.
Zareh chuckled as she nodded. "Yes, now come on, we've got a long walk ahead of us."
Vala raised a questioning eyebrow, gesturing to her back.
"We can't get you to fly us all there, Val, it would be too suspicious according to the slayers in the town." Zareh explained, picking up her bags once more as she began the trek towards the city. "You can't shadow-port us there either, you're not powerful enough."
The half vampire scowled as she followed her older sister's lead.
Raelin took a firm hold on Ranger's leash and managed to keep up with her sister's strides, while trying to keep her tears enclosed in her eyes.
"We really should have got a carriage or a Muggle car, or something, Zar." Raelin stated, trying to lighten the mood a bit, and get her own mind off of leaving.
Both older sisters chuckled.
"The day I step into a Muggle car, is the day I meet my one true love." Vala stated in her usual soft, heavily accented voice, causing both of her sisters to stare wide-eyes at her. "It isn't going to happen."
Zareh, having been the first to get over the shock of Vala speaking, was the one to reply. "You never know, Val. There's a guy out there for each of us, just waiting to have the chance to meet us and bow to our every wish." The sorceress began giggling like a five-year-old at her own statement, while Vala just rolled her dark eyes and stayed quiet.
The rest of the journey to the town was a quiet one, only a few random comments were exchanged between Raelin and Zareh, but none from Vala – an eye roll here and there, but that was it.
"Once we get to London, we're suppose to find a place called The Leaky Cauldron." Zareh stated while they were on the plane. The sorceress was gripping the handles of her seat so hard her knuckles were turning white and her face was quite pale by this time.
"You don't like flying, do you Zar?" Raelin questioned, taking her fingers off the pages of a book about werewolves she was reading.
"What makes you come to that conclusion?" Zareh retorted, chuckling nervously while taking deep breaths to try and calm her self.
"No reason whatsoever." Raelin murmured sarcastically, returning to her book.
Vala was looking longingly out the window, wanting desperately just to jump out of the airplane and soar freely through the clouds. This, sadly, was just a dream. Zareh would kill her is she did anything to show that she was a vampire, or of magic blood. To pass the time, the half vampire began to think back to when they had to go through customs in order to get onto the plane.
A few hours previous…"Get your passports out." Zareh ordered her younger sisters, getting her own out of the pocket of her pants.
Raelin, who was hanging off of Vala's arm at the moment, managed to dig her own out of her own pocket, handing it to her oldest sister. She wasn't the happiest witch at the moment; Ranger was already getting ready to be boarded onto the plane. The attendant had said that she had her sisters to guide her around, and that her "guide dog" wasn't of great use to her on the trip. Zareh had to stop her before Raelin put a curse on the unfortunate person.
Vala took out her passport and opened it to the page that the person needed to look at; her eyes quickly opened up wide in horror, though.
"Zar, we've got a problem." Vala said in a low voice.
"What now?" Zareh whined, turning around.
Vala thrust the book at her sister, who glanced at it briefly before handing it back. The sorceress scratched her head and groaned, only because the photo of Vala was extremely blurry, thanks to her being a vampire.
"Next," the man at the counter said loudly.
Zareh turned around and smiled sweetly to the man, handing two of the three passports to him. Once they were checked out to be okay, the two moved out of the way and let Vala in front of them, looking at her worriedly.
"What's wrong?" Raelin whispered.
"Vala's bloody photo didn't turn out good enough." Zareh replied quietly.
The half vampire took a deep breath as she handed her passport over. The man looked at it for a few seconds before looking up at her.
"I can't make out this picture, ma'am." He said in a bored tone of voice.
Vala's eyes met his own and she used a slight bit of magic on him. "Look again." She said with an icy ring to her voice.
The man didn't even glance down to break his gaze from her; he just slowly stamped it and handed it back.
"You are so lucky you didn't get caught." Raelin stated as her older sister returned to them.
"Uh-huh, now shut up and get onto the plane." Zareh ordered once more, shoving her sisters towards their terminal.
Present time…"Val, wake up!" Zareh half shouted into the half vampire's ear in an attempt to wake her up.
Vala groggily opened her eyes and immediately closed them again as the sunlight pierced her sensitive eyesight.
"Put these on and let's go before something else goes wrong." Zareh stated, shoving a pair of dark sunglasses with small lenses at the half vampire.
Something else? Vala thought to herself, raising an eyebrow as she placed the glasses on her face. What did Raelin do this time?
The young woman wasn't given any other time to ponder as she was literally dragged to the terminal where Raelin was already, sitting on all their bags with Ranger ever present at her side.
"If I could actually see the time, I would have timed you to see how long it took you guys." Raelin stated dryly as the two approached her.
"This thing I am forced to call a sister––" Zareh jerked her thumb over to Vala "––is really hard to wake up, so it's not my fault."
Vala snorted at that statement and picked up her trunk with no trouble at all – but then again, she did possess enhanced strength.
"You two are going to be the death of me one of these days." Zareh stated randomly, grunting slightly as she struggled with her own trunk.
"Happy to hear it, Zar." Raelin replied, tapping her cane along the tiles of the airport with Ranger's leash in her left hand.
Vala chuckled and held the door open for Zareh and Raelin to go through before setting both her and Raelin's trunks onto the pavement.
"Don't worry guys," Zareh reassured them, "I called a taxi – I think – to come and pick us up."
"That's a Muggle vehicle, correct?" Raelin pondered, playing innocently with a blond ringlet. Zareh nodded and began to pace along the sidewalk. The werewolf turned to her vampiric sister with a wicked grin upon her face. "Now you've got to meet your one true love."
Vala's eyes opened up wide in horror before narrowing them at Zareh, growling low in her throat.
The eldest sister just gave her a small, sympathetic smile before returning to her pacing.
"How long is this going to take, and how are we going to pay?" Raelin questioned as she stroked Ranger's soft fur.
Zareh stopped dead in her tracks and swore, smacking her hand to her forehead. "I completely forgot that Muggles don't take our money!" she groaned, flopping onto the ground next to all their bags and her sisters. "I've only got a few Galleons, Sickles and Knuts left that Drake gave us. Oh, and a key too."
Zareh groaned, hiding her head in the sleeves of her white sweater, which was covered slightly by her white travelling cloak.
Vala took a deep breath and looked around cautiously before closing her eyes and placing her hand in one of the shadows that the bags had made. Within seconds, she pulled her hand back out with a random person's wallet.
The half vampire nudged Zareh's shoulder.
"What?" Zareh asked in an annoyed tone of voice, keeping her face buried in her sleeve. Vala tossed the wallet into her sister's lap with a satisfied smirk. The sorceress opened her mouth to say something as she looked through the wallet, but put a hand up. "I'm not even going to ask."
"What?" Raelin questioned, oblivious to what was going on in her surroundings.
"Nothing, we'll tell you later." Zareh stated, pulling a few dozen pounds out of the wallet before handing it back to Vala, who was quick to place it back into the owner's pocket.
Raelin huffed and crossed her arms over her chest, scowling at her genes for making her blind. "It's going to rain." She said suddenly, sniffing the air slightly.
Zareh bit her lip to keep herself from swearing, mostly because the taxi hadn't come yet and the fact that she was wearing a completely white outfit.
"You're wearing white again, aren't you?" Raelin questioned, giving her oldest sister an evil grin.
"Shut up," was the sharp reply as raindrops began to fall melodiously upon the cement sidewalk. "I can't even dry myself because I don't have a wand."
Vala tilted her head to one side to show her confusion as her brows creased.
"One, this place is crawling with Muggles and two, those who are magical don't like it when you don't use a wand for some odd reason." Zareh explained. She pulled her large hood up to protect her blond hair from the rain as best she could.
Raelin snorted and placed a corner of her long grey cloak over Ranger's already wet body and placing her own hood over her frizzy blond head.
"I see why you didn't want to go in a Muggle vehicle, Vala." The young werewolf stated suddenly, causing Vala to look at her through the shadow cast over her pale face by her black hood. "They're unreliable and bloody slow."
Vala chuckled and wrapped her cloak tighter around her, not that she was cold or anything, but just to look like she was as to not arouse suspicion of any potential threats (vampire slayers) in the midst.
"Finally!" Zareh sighed in relief as a taxi pulled up in front of them.
"You three the Knight sisters?" The cab driver asked in a heavily accented voice.
"Yes, that's us." Zareh replied quickly. "Can we put our things in the back?"
"Certainly, certainly." He replied, popping the back trunk open. "There ya're, need any help there?"
"No, we've got everything under control here." The sorceress replied, handing her bag to Vala along with Raelin's, who, in turn, placed them neatly into the trunk. "It's okay if we have a guide dog in the back, right?"
"Oh sure, sure. But if he makes a mess, you be cleanin' it up missy." The driver replied with a wave of his hand.
Within minutes, the bags were safely stored in the trunk, Raelin and Vala were buckled in the back seats with Ranger sitting on the seat in between them, and Zareh was sitting in the front, trying to remember something about magical meeting places she had read in a book once.
"Where to?" the cab driver questioned cheerily.
Zareh was about to say The Leaky Cauldron, when she remembered that Muggles had no idea it existed. "Just drop us off at the end of Charing Cross Road, please. Our aunt owns one of the shops there and I can't quite place the name of it." She lied, smiling sweetly.
The man looked at her strangely, but shrugged it off. "Charing Cross Road it is then." He repeated, shifting the car into gear as he pulled away from the curb, nearly hitting another car in the process.
Vala took a deep breath and closed her eyes slightly, gripping the vampire tooth that was hanging on a string around her neck. (It had been her first vampiric tooth she had lost.) She entertained herself by pretending she was back in the village, playing football with the children there without a care in the world.
It was quite a short ride to Charing Cross Road, within five to ten minutes the driver stopped suddenly at the side of the road.
"Are you sure this is where you want to be dropped off, it's raining pretty hard out."
"No, no, no, this is just fine." Zareh stated, unbuckling herself and stepping out of the car into the pouring rain.
Raelin also got out, along with Ranger and Vala, who was quick to get their bags out of the back.
"That'll be twenty pounds." The cab driver said, holding his hand out the window to Zareh, who just looked at him with confusion. "It's extra for the dog."
The sorceress looked at the small wad of cash she held in her hand at the moment and took out a note that said 20 on it before handing it to him.
"Pleasure doing business ma'am." He said with the tip of his hat before speeding away.
Vala tapped Zareh on her shoulder.
"Hmm?" she replied, turning towards her sister.
The half vampire pointed across the street to a small pub with a sign hanging out in the front labeled: The Leaky Cauldron, which was placed in between a bookshop and a record store.
"Well, here goes nothing." Zareh said, taking her bag in hand before walking briskly across the street. Vala took a hold of the remaining two bags and began to follow her sister, with Raelin trailing behind, tapping her cane against the road uncertainly and Ranger nudged her out of the way when an obstacle came her way.
The trio entered the pub seconds later, not knowing that what journey they were embarking on would be the biggest challenge of their lives.
………………..
Okay, so it took me awhile on this one, sorry. I've been really busy with school (and an evil English teacher who hates all the smart people in her class); I shall try and get the next chapter up as soon as I get it finished! (And as soon as I get a few more reviews!)
SilverLight05: Thanks for reviewing! And the trouble hasn't even begun yet; just wait until they meet the Marauders!
To the rest of you who read it and didn't review… please review! I love opening up my inbox and seeing it full of nice reviews from you all. PLEASE REVIEW!