The feeling of the vampire's bite was horrific. It was like a Cruciatus curse, but in his neck only. The vampire's magic still held him immobile, but Harry fought as hard as he could against its hold, striving with every fibre of his being to break free. The only external sign of his struggle were beads of sweat that appeared briefly on his forehead and quickly ran down his face as the beast continued to eagerly drain his blood.
The horror and pain were almost overwhelming.
Incredibly, through his torment, Harry could hear the chatter of the excited crowd growing, and a single thought dominated the little part of his mind that made him all that he was: I am not going to let Ron and Hermione die, not like this, no matter what.
Suddenly Rhokoth stepped back, his face contorted in surprise. Harry's blood covered his mouth and chin, its deep red contrasting with the stark whiteness of the chief vampire's face.
Rhokoth's raised his withered hand in the air above his head, as if about to strike Harry, but before he could bring it down, there was a muffled detonation, and it burst into flame!
Still frozen in place, Harry looked on as Rhokoth's eyes widened at the sight of his burning hand. Screams filled the room as the other vampires leapt to their feet in confusion and panic.
The immortal lord of the clan staggered backwards, almost tripping on the cushions littering the floor, and crashed heavily against the throne he had previously occupied. An unholy cry emerged from his blood covered mouth as the flame spread down his arm, igniting dead flesh and clothing as it went.
The magical bonds holding Harry faded and he fell to one knee in weakness, but even as he dropped he reached into his clothes and grabbed his wand.
"Reducto!" he screamed, pointing at the vampire's chest.
There was an explosion of clothes and flesh as a massive hole appeared where the creature's withered heart used to be, cutting off the screams of the dying monster as a large portion of its chest sprayed over the throne in a shower pf gore.
For a shocked second, Rhokoth stared at the hole. He raised his eyes to meet Harry's, disbelief evident in their soulless black depths, then his whole body loudly erupted into a cloud of dust that swirled up into the air in a vortex. The empty robes he had been wearing fluttered to the ground still smouldering at the sleeve.
All around them, the vampires went insane.
They were screaming and racing around mindlessly. Some appeared to be trying to escape through the doors, but others lay on the ground writhing in pain, clutching the tattoo that had marked them as one of Rhokoth's clan.
Ron raised the crossbow, but couldn't seem to decide what to shoot. Hermione was still lying on the ground.
A vampire suddenly leapt through the air towards them. Ron finally fired the crossbow, hitting the flying creature in the centre of its chest. Immediately the vampire exploded in a cloud of dust, similar to the one that had signalled the finish of Rhokoth, only smaller.
Another creature ran towards them and Harry cast a powerful blasting curse at it, throwing the thing back across the room and smashing it into a mirrored wall that shattered spectacularly. Ron dropped the empty crossbow and took out his wand as more of the pain maddened things began looking to attack them.
One rose up, seemingly out of nowhere, and grabbed Hermione's leg. The girl shrieked, showing the first real sign of being conscious since Rhokoth had exploded. Ron and Harry instantly struck it with violent spells that tore it to pieces, and Hermione joined in with a beam of light that ignited the creature as it was tossed into the air. She climbed to her feet as the two ran to her, the three of them standing back to back.
The spectacular destruction of the vampire did not go unnoticed, and more of the maddened beasts turned their attention to the teenagers.
There was a reason why human Wizards and Witches ruled over the magical world, and that reason was never more evident than when Harry and his two friends stood back to back and fought for their lives. The insane vampires were about to rediscover that reason, to their eternal detriment.
All of the years of studying, all of the practice, and their own personal experiences, came together into a coherent whole for the teenagers. A barrage of offensive spells lashed out at the rioting creatures, burning, blasting them mercilessly.
Hermione's sunlight beam was the most effective, usually incinerating her targets which then collapsed in smouldering heaps. Harry started with a variety of hexes, but soon fell back onto the simple Reducto curse, finding it best at quickly blowing holes in his targets and removing their capability to threaten him. Ron favoured a powerful bludgeoning hex that dismembered at least one vampire with its force, and violently flung away anything that it touched.
The vampires were inhumanly quick though, and more than once one of the trio found themselves mere inches from the clawed grasp of a crazed monster. Luckily, the loss of much of their minds reduced the offensive strategy of the vampires to the simple 'scream and leap' that, while still an image to fill the nightmares of countless people throughout history, improved the odds of the teenagers surviving dramatically.
Blasting another vampire, Harry just noticed the wave of enraged creatures begin to thin, when one directly in front of him exploded for no apparent reason. Before he could spare a moment to think about what he had just seen, a second one suddenly did the same thing. More eruptions followed and the air quickly became filled with the dusty remains of spontaneously exploding vampires.
Less than ten minutes after the vampire lord had first bitten Harry, it was deathly quiet in the room, aside from the panting of the three teenagers still clutching their wands watchfully.
Dusty remains settled silently, stirring briefly in imperceptible air currents. Tattered clothing lay in untidy heaps, the odd pile smoking from Hermione's beam, and rich jewellery rattled to a rest on the hard floor, but not a single vampire remained.
"Bloody hell!" said Ron, exhaling loudly.
For once, Hermione didn't tell him off.
-
Ron wanted to search the house for plunder, pointing out the mound of jewellery he had collected from the expired former inhabitants as proof that vampires always had heaps of gold hidden away. Hermione wanted to leave as soon as possible. Harry was undecided.
"Even if all of the vampires are gone, which it does look like, they might still have human followers," Hermione reasoned. "We have the cup, so let's get out of here, now, before something else goes wrong."
"We have been over this, Hermione," said Ron. "You saw the guard, and the Hunters. They all died at the same time as the vampires. The mark killed them just the same as it did the blood suckers. The place is ours."
Eventually they turned to Harry, who was still examining the cup. He held it in his hands, not daring to believe they had lived, let alone retrieved a Horcrux.
His neck hurt from the bite, despite the healing Hermione had given it, and he believed some of her desire to leave quickly was just anxiety to get him back to somewhere that he could be examined, but he knew the bite hadn't infected him.
"He wasn't trying to turn me," he had said, in the aftermath. "He was feeding. It hurts, but I feel fine."
"Do I look like I have died?" he finally snapped, and was immediately ashamed of himself for his impatience with her concern.
That had been at least a quarter of an hour ago, and they were still arguing about the next course of action.
"We search the house," he said at last, making Ron grin and Hermione frown. "We look for any prisoners they may have had. You heard what Worple said, that they sometimes keep people alive to feed from them, so we are not leaving until we have made sure there are no prisoners."
Ron was excited, Hermione was torn. Harry knew it was the right thing to do, but they all knew the risk.
"We can just tell the villages and they can send somebody up," she suggested.
"No, Hermione. Before we leave this place we are going to use one of the scrolls and put a Fidelus on it. Voldemort was here, there might be clues to things he learnt that could help us find a way to destroy him. I am not going to let anything out of this house until we have made sure it can't help us."
They stayed together and made a quick search of the upper floors, taking the time to place locking charms on every door, just in case.
Most of the rooms were richly furnished, but dusty and neglected. Several showed signs of having been used recently, like a large dining room on the first floor and several nearby bedrooms.
The dinning room was lined with empty coffins filled with dirt. It was the main 'bedroom' of the clan. The nearby bedrooms had only individual coffins; for vampires higher in the clan hierarchy, they guessed.
Rhokoth's bedroom was almost as large as the ballroom. It was practically an apartment in itself, with lounges, a study desk, and even a full sized black grand piano in one corner.
All of the windows in every room and hallway were boarded up and curtained with thick cloth. Ron started pulling the boards off every window he walked past, although Harry wasn't sure why, and wasn't game to ask.
They found a library, but after a quick glance at some of the titles, Hermione blanched and lost her enthusiasm.
"Not today," she said, looking rather green.
On the ground floor they found a door and staircase that led downwards to a basement kitchen. What they found there made all three of them lose the little food they had eaten before their capture.
Banishing gore, and casting cleaning charms as they went, they found a door leading to a lower level. The subbasement had been converted to a prison, of about a dozen cells.
Moaning and wailing filled the air as the prisoners heard the trio enter, probably mistaking them for their captors. Harry opened the first cell to find a skinny, white haired man wear rags, lying on a dirty, uncomfortable looking cot. The smell from the room was overpowering and made Harry gag until Hermione cast bubblehead charms on all three of them.
The man looked quite old, and appeared to have lost his mind. He didn't say a word, but randomly screamed loudly, and kept offering his heavily scarred neck to Ron, as if expecting to be fed on.
Ron ended up impatiently stunning him, which started an argument with Hermione that only stopped when Harry opened more cells to set the people free.
Initially terrified and disbelieving, the prisoners quickly rallied and fled up the stairs. Harry had to hurry to unlock the main doors before the mob tore them down in their frantic effort to escape from the house of horror.
Only a few would stop to talk; the ones that had been captives for the shortest amount of time. They listened when the trio told them that all of the vampires were dead, and some managed to have wits enough to thank the teenagers for saving them, but most were too traumatised to think of anything except escape.
Hermione convinced one young lady to take the old man they had first found. She gasped in surprise when she saw him, obviously recognising him despite his age and ill health, but didn't offer any explanation as she led him away.
Since she seemed to be the most coherent, Harry also told her that nobody would ever be able to come back to the house. She appeared to think that meant Harry was going to destroy it, and he didn't disabuse her of the idea.
Once they were sure the house was empty, they moved onto the servant quarters. It looked like the Hunters and other willing servants had been quartered there, since the three found their corpses everywhere.
Harry was trembling with fatigue then they finally reached the barn. Besides the bodies of a few more of the vampire's servants, all they discovered were several horses that they promptly released.
Dawn was approaching, but Harry insisted they cast the Fidelus before resting.
Hermione took the scroll and performed the spell, making Ron the secret keeper. As the parchment burst into flames, they felt the magic take hold and hide the whole compound.
"Right," said Ron, once he had given them the secret. "I'm getting a bite to eat and lying down for long nap."
"How can you possibly think about food after seeing what we saw tonight?" asked Hermione.
"You can't keep a good man down, Hermione. No reason for us starving ourselves now, is there?"
Harry started laughing, and found he couldn't stop. Ron and Hermione joined in, although not quite as uncontrollably. It was a mixture of hysteria, reaction to multiple shocks, and relief, but it was badly needed by all three of them.
Finding themselves too tired to return to the village, they claimed a room of the servant's quarters to sleep in, after a quick meal of food collected from the servant's kitchen.
Harry slept only fitfully. He kept dreaming of the fangs sinking into his neck.
Hermione speculated Rhokoth may have been destroyed by the lingering magic of his mother's blood protection, or maybe even the Basilisk poison and Phoenix tears he could still be carrying from his ordeal in the Chamber of Secrets. Either way, Harry knew he had once again escaped through no skill or planning of his own, and in his own mind, he wondered if his blood might be carrying something more sinister than Phoenix tears.
He managed a few fitful hours before giving up, and rose quietly so as not to disturb Ron, who was snoring in the bunk above. Hermione had taken a cot nearby and was already awake and watching him. He motioned for her to follow him and they stepped outside into the cool morning air.
"Were you watching me to see if I turned?" he asked her.
She nodded, looking afraid to admit it, but certain it was the right thing to have done.
"Thanks," he said simply.
"Harry-"
"Don't say it, Hermione. I nearly got us all killed, again."
"I was going to say, before you rudely cut me off, that it wasn't that bad a plan. You could not have known you were going to be brought in front of the leader," she said
Harry shook his head. "The one that met us at the door, he knew, I am sure of it. He must have used something like Legilimency as soon as he saw us, and led us right into a trap. You said it was insane, and you were right, again."
"You couldn't have known, Harry. I thought it was a good plan, I was just scared. We couldn't have known that Rhokoth would be able to see through cloaks. I should have done something as soon as I walked into the room and saw the vampires. If it is anybody's fault, it was mine for not attacking the moment things went wrong. I was meant to be watching your backs."
"Hermione, you couldn't have defeated them all-"
"IT WAS MY FAULT YOU GOT BITTEN," she howled, and burst into tears.
Covering her face with her hands, she started to run away. Harry caught her and took her into his arms. She rested her head on his shoulder and cried as he rubbed her back and soothed her the way he had seen other people to somebody who was distraught..
"No, Hermione, it's not your fault. I should never have taken such a risk – it was stupid. We should never have come here."
"We didn't have a choice," said Ron, walking over. Harry had not seen him leave the room. "The cup was here. No matter what you think or say, eventually we would have had to have come here."
"From what that oversized leech said, even You-Know-Who didn't know the cup was here. We could have spent months looking for it and risked our lives over and over, only to find it missing - just like the locket," explained Ron.
He leaned against a veranda pole next to where they were standing and turned to watch the sun rise through the trees of the surrounding forest.
Golden beams of light pierced the shadowy outlines of the majestic trees, shining brightly up as they touched the faintest speck of dust or wisp of moisture. "I think we got lucky, very lucky, but aside from you having a sore neck, I am not going to complain about the result," said Ron.
Hermione wiped her eyes and looked at Ron curiously.
"When did you get so smart?" she asked, with a weak smile.
"Just makes sense. I thought about it a bit before I went to sleep and figured it was like we had been guided or something, you know? It's just too much of a coincidence, like a few other things that have happened," he answered.
"I mean, what are the odds that this old bat, who has probably spent a few hundred years making sure no other vampire in his clan can ever stab him in the back and take his place, chooses to sink his great big fangs - and by the way Harry, I saw them - and they were enormous - anyway, he sinks his choppers into little Harrikin's neck, and it turns out to be bad for him?"
"This guy has been munching on wizards and Muggles since forever, and he turns to dust as soon as he gets a mouthful of Harry?"
"It's just too easy, that's all," he finished with a shrug.
"Hey," protested Harry. "I did hit him in the chest with a Reducto, you know? I didn't just stand there and let him go off like a fire cracker on his own. Not that it was a nice and easy having him chew on my neck either!"
"Yeah about that," said Ron, with mock seriousness. "Having any ill effects? Feeling a wee bit peckish for a bit of Muggle maybe? Thinking about turning into a bat or something?"
"Ron, it's not something to joke about," said Hermione, regaining some composure while listening to the two boys' banter.
"Not yet," laughed Harry. "But I had better be sure, eh?"
Letting Hermione go, he walked into one of the pools of sunlight now spilling down into the courtyard, and threw his arms wide - as if he was trying to embrace the bright stream of luminescence. He turned a full circle, bathing every inch of his body in its warm glow, and then stopped looking straight at them.
Opening his mouth to speak, suddenly his face twisted into a grimace of pain and horror. He threw himself to the ground, kicking and screeching like a wounded Hippogriff.
"Harry!" screamed Hermione, as she jumped to run to him.
Ron caught her around the waist and held her back.
"No, Hermione stop! You have to keep away!" he yelled, struggling to keep hold as she fought to get to Harry.
Harry stopped screaming and, to the astonishment of his friends, started laughing.
"Got you," he said, peeking up off the ground.
"Harry!" yelled Hermione, stomping her feet. "That wasn't funny!"
Ron sighed in relief as he realised Harry had been joking and then smiled an enormous smile. "I thought it was brilliant," he said.
-
Once they had sufficiently apologised to Hermione, Harry for his callous humour and Ron for daring to find it funny, they spent the rest of the morning performing the horrible task of putting all of the vampire's servant's bodies into a deep, mass grave outside of the walls. The coffins they emptied into the grave, and then burned in a huge bonfire.
It was not a job that they had wanted to do, but each of them felt a need to. Harry because, against all reason, he felt a pang of guilt for their death, Hermione because she believed the deceased deserved a better ending that to be just left for wild animals to dispatch, and Ron because he knew the other two would not be happy just burning down the house and all of its former inhabitants – his preferred option.
By mid afternoon there wasn't anything they felt needed immediate doing. Ron decided to search for the treasure he was sure had to be hidden somewhere, and Harry found he needed more rest to recover from getting bitten, even after multiple blood replenishing and various other potions he had been forced to drink by his concerned friends.
Hermione agreed to help Ron, suggesting it wasn't a good idea for him to be poking around the house on his own.
The sun was just starting to make dip below the trees on its way to bed when Ron excitedly woke Harry.
"Harry, come look, we've found it! The treasure room, it's filled with gold and stuff."
Harry shook his sleep muddled head and let Ron drag him into the house. Just off the lobby, behind a hidden door that looked like a normal section of wall, Ron and Hermione had found an enormous fortune in coins, jewellery, and artefacts.
Chests of all sizes, overflowing with gems and gold, were piled everywhere. Golden chairs, bolts of exotic cloth, elaborate jewelled candle sticks, weapons of every description, and much, much more, had been stacked haphazardly in the room.
There were at least twice as many gold coins of various shapes and sizes as Harry had in his Gringotts vault, and the coins were the minor items!
Hermione was standing outside looking excited, but hesitant.
"Is it safe?" Harry asked her, before stepping into the room.
"I can't detect any wards or charms, and no curses either. It looks safe, but…"
"But what?"
"Should we touch it? I mean it belongs to the people in the villagers, not us. They have been living under the heel of the vampires for generations. Everything here must have been taken from them, it should go back - to help them."
"What?" asked Ron, looking and sounding astounded at the idea of giving away the fortune. "Are you joking? We found it - finders keepers. It's only fair. Right, Harry?"
Harry looked at the gold. Money didn't really mean much to him, but it meant a lot to Ron. He knew it was Ron's fondest dream - to finally be done with second hand clothes and hand-me-down books.
"Hermione, I think Ron is right. No, hear me out," he said, when she started to object. Do you think a single unmarked person out there would object to giving everything in here to destroy the vampires? We are definitely going to keep the house, at least for now, but besides that, who do we give it all to?" he asked.
"They could share it out equally," she answered.
He shook his head. "You know what people are like, Hermione. Before you know it they will be fighting over the gold. Somebody will insist they deserve more than somebody else, or this person will accuse that person of getting more than their share, and before you know it, they will be killing each other. It won't work."
"They could set up a committee, to oversee distribution," she suggested, but didn't sound very convinced.
Harry noticed Ron seemed to be holding his breath, not daring to say anything.
"And who would decide who gets on the committee? No, Hermione, I don't think just dumping this lot on them will be doing them any favours. If you really want to help, take a quarter and use it to help them indirectly. Pay for healers or others to move here and work with the people. Set up a fund for them or something. I am sure you can think of a dozen ways to help them."
Hermione thought through what Harry was suggesting. He could see the ideas popping up as she imagined just how much good she could do with the gold.
Wordlessly, she nodded, accepting Harry's reasoning. Ron whooped and unceremoniously threw himself into a huge pile of coins. He tossed them into the air and made swimming motions.
Harry laughed and was tempted to join him, but decided to wander further into the room and have a look around. He found several trunks full of expensive looking clothes, much like the finery the vampires had been wearing, and bolts of silk and other materials. It looked like a pirate's booty in its variety and randomness. No wonder the vampire had thought nothing of drinking from the cup of Helga Hufflepuff! Even if he had known what it was, it was pretty small and plain compared to the gem laden ones lying on the floor of his treasure room.
There were a few jewelled cases on a crystal table that yielded fine swords of every description. Another chest on the same table, buried under shiny chain mail vests, contained several beautiful daggers, and five magnificent wands.
The wands had been set into handles of gold inlaid ivory, shaped to fit a hand comfortably. Harry was amazed to find sparks fly out of each of the wands as he picked them up, signalling they were at least a bit compatible with him.
Ron had dragged Hermione down with him into the pile of coins and was busy trying to bury her when Harry got back to them. The redhead was wearing a jewelled crown that sat at a crazy angle, and was shovelling handfuls of money onto the helpless with laughter witch.
"Hey, look at these," Harry said, holding out the chest with the wands and daggers.
"Pretty," said Ron. "But look what I found." He held up something very familiar to Harry; an invisibility cloak!
"Brilliant!" said Harry. "Now we both have one. Let's look for one for Hermione."
They spent at least an hour digging through the treasure, but didn't find another cloak. There were many other interesting items, and both Ron and Hermione kept several rings and other items of jewellery. All three now wore heavy crowns, although Ron had somehow managed to get two on his head, one on top of the other.
Seeing what Ron and Hermione had picked out, Harry selected a necklace and matching bracelets, thinking he would give them to Ginny. He found some rings, but all of them were too gaudy for him to feel comfortable with.
"Why don't we just pack the lot into a few trunks and take it with us?" asked Ron. "We could spend days here and still not get through it all."
Hermione agreed and began searching for some suitable chests they could enlarge to hold everything, but Harry hesitated.
"I think it might be a good idea to leave a bit here," he said. "Where nobody knows about it. It might not be as safe as Gringotts, but if anything happens, we have somewhere to come back to, and some resources to use."
He was thinking about a place to run to if Voldemort took over Brittain. They needed a safe house to retreat to, if things went completely wrong. After a few minutes discussing it, they agreed to leave half of the treasure behind, as an 'emergency fund'.
They ate a meal right there in the treasure room, using heavy gold plated cutlery and eating off golden plates. Their goblets were so heavy with decoration it almost took two hands to lift, even when empty.
Ron chatted endlessly about what he was going to do with his money, making and spending fortunes in his imagination. Hermione laughed and both made fun of Ron and encouraged him at the same time, while admitting that although she had thought of many ways to help others with the money, she had also thought of several things she wanted to get for herself.
'You mean besides a library that puts Hogwarts to shame?" teased Ron.
Harry's thoughts, once he had gotten over the initial excitement at the find, turned to the Hufflepuff cup and how they were going to destroy the fragment of Voldemort's soul locked inside of it. Hopefully they would have better luck than with the locket.
Despite his extra sleep, Harry was worn out, so Ron offered to do the sorting with Hermione casting the spells needed. Nobody felt comfortable enough for the three of them to separate for long at night, so Harry piled up some of the clothes and unwound bolts of cloth in a corner, and took a nap.
He dreamed of being captured by vampires again, but this time Ron and Hermione had been bitten and he had to kill them by stabbing his wand through their hearts.
When he woke, his watch told him it was the next day. Ron and Hermione had fallen asleep on a large pile of clothes near Harry, and had snuggled up together. He smiled and briefly considered waking them with the now traditional bucket of water, but decided to be kind instead and woke them by shaking and banging a couple of bags of coins together noisily.
"Hey Ron, isn't this the sound you want to wake up to every morning?" he asked, as Ron's eyes cracked open in response to his racket.
A large smile grew as Ron became aware of what Harry was doing, and where they had slept.
"That is the second most beautiful sound I have ever woken up to, Harry," he answered.
"What's the first?" asked Hermione, sitting up.
"Sizzling bacon."
Hermione cast a few more wards on the house and property, adding to the weak protections the vampires had placed, while Ron sealed and warded the treasure room using the last of the scrolls from Edward's Enchanters.
"Some of the wards date back to before the vampires moved in," the fascinated witch told them. "It is as if they took absolutely no extra precautions."
"Well, they were vampires you know," reasoned Ron. "And they did pretty much enslave the whole valley for at least the last hundred years. It's not like they really had much to worry about, is it?"
Hermione thoughtfully agreed, and added another round of wards while Ron and Harry started transfiguring the wall around the house and yard into a much taller and forbidding one.
The surrounding forest was a dark and gloomy place, but with the vampires gone, some of the nastier elements might feel the need to move on. Nobody wanted anything that wandered out of the forest to take up residence in the house.
Finally, it was time to leave. They didn't really feel comfortable there, and needed to investigate how to destroy the Horcruxes.
Harry was still in favour of throwing it through the veil in the Department of Mysteries, but he couldn't figure out how to arrange it without anybody in the Ministry seeing him.
Ron wanted to put the locket into the cup, fill the cup with acid, and watch them both dissolve.
Hermione wanted to find a way that didn't destroy what were important historical artefacts she suspected to have extraordinary magical properties.
"Sorry, Hermione," said Harry. "We have no idea what the properties are even meant to be, and Voldemort's soul fragment is just too dangerous to mess about with."
"Then Ron's idea is the best," she said.
Ron's pleased smile was so bright it could have incinerated a vampire.
After they had done all they could think of to protect and hide the house, the trio activated an illegal Portkey and returned to Grimmauld place.
Kreacher was waiting for them.