TriNymphs - Chapter Twenty-Six - Last Chapter - And That's a Wrap (Disclaimer on my homepage. Thanks to anyone who has read this or watched it and mad thanks to fRANkiEGirl61 for being the only one to review)
Everyone had already known that Mr Malfoy was a death eater. Except for apparently the ministry. But the triplets told Dumbledore what happened, and even if Mr Malfoy wasn't about to be arrested (the Minister was in denial) Dumbledore said that Copper had been caught. He was currently residing in Azkaban. "He was an odd child. He always had an interest in the dark arts, but his obsession was in magical creatures. We once caught him trying to dissect a flubberworm. No one could ever forget about that kid," Dumbledore chuckled, "He was the lone Muggle Born in Slytherin."
Other than the meeting with Dumbledore, life for the triplets went completely back to normal. Exams finished. Classes ended. They did have to spend a day in the hospital wing though, just to make sure they weren't injured.
On the day of her last exam Chelsea walked into the girl's dormitory to find Dominic lounging on her bed reading a gossip magazine most likely stolen from one of the girl's beds. Chelsea snorted, "Perv. Creeping in the girls dorms. You're lucky no one else walked in first."
"If you had read the things your roommate has written in here about a certain Quidditch player you wouldn't be calling me the perv."
Chelsea walked over and jumped onto the bed. "So what're you doing here anyways?"
"Ouch. So mean. I haven't seen you in months and this is how you greet me? Maybe I'll just go!" Dominic said dramatically, standing up. Chelsea tugged the back of his shirt, pulling him back on the bed. He smiled. "My mother has sent me to be messenger boy." Chelsea hadn't seen Vampira in months either. She had missed them and felt guilty for not making more of an effort to see them, but she had been distracted. First Quidditch, then Alex with her conspiracy theories. Not to mention Nymph training with Atlas and magic classes.
"So are you going to tell me the message?"
"Trying to kick me out already?" Dominic collapsed back on the pillows, raising the magazine to eye level again and finding his page.
Chelsea lay down next to him. "So what did she write?" Pause. "And whose magazine is that anyways?" Chelsea realised the obvious question, eyes widening. She hoped it was Alex, after all the talk of gross sweaty Quidditch players when they were kids. Dominic shrugged, still trying to find the page, and pointed in the direction of the bed. "Want to clarify?" They were on the bed in the far end of the dorm. Meaning all of the other beds were in the direction Dominic had just pointed in.
"The next one over." Chelsea smiled. Oh, she was going to have fun bugging someone about this. "Found one of the pages." They lay there laughing at Chelsea's roommate. And guess what. Speak of the devil; she walked right into the room. Along with Holly and Eve, the schools gossip monger. Oh shit. By tomorrow the whole school was gonna think she had been sleeping with Dominic or something. How does a twelve year old even get a reputation like that?
Alex started laughing. Chelsea sat up and flashed Alex's magazine at her. That shut her up.
"Sooo, whose this?" Holly asked, looking over Dominic. He felt violated. Luckily none of the girls had read Hogwarts: A History and so none of them knew that boys shouldn't have been able to get into the girls dorms.
"This is Dominic. He's an old friend of mine visiting Hogwarts. I was just about to show him around." Chelsea smiled and edged out of the room, backtracking to pull Dominic after her. She closed the door, hiding them from view of the other girls, and poof he was gone. Chelsea scowled and walked up the stairs. He was annoying. She didn't know where to go. She had told the other girls she was showing her friend around the school, so she couldn't go back after only two seconds. She exited the common room.
"So miss tour guide, where to first?" asked Dominic, walking out from an abandoned classroom, and slinging his arm around Chelsea's shoulders. He made a show of crouching down to her level. Tall bastard.
"I 'unno."
"You're horrible at this. Maybe you should get a new job."
"Did I get fired already?"
"You sure did. Now, show me to the grounds! It sucks being under ground anyways."
So they went and they hung out and Dominic figured he shouldn't hang around for dinner since someone might rat out that some random kid is on campus. "Besides," he said, "School food is notoriously bad. Oh, that reminds me! The thing I was supposed to be messenger boy for. There's a school, where I live," he lived in Hell. He and his parents were vampires who had died not that far back. He didn't say Hell incase some random first year was listening in. "They teach people, like wizards, who died before they could finish their education. They also have a course for fire nymphs, much better than any course you can get here. My mother wants to know if you want to live with us and go to school there. I'm assuming you're staying for the summer anyways since Malfoy is apparently a jackass. There, I sounded informative, right? Well, maybe except for on the last little bit." he grinned and poofed away.
Chelsea stayed sitting, back against a tree, a little shocked. Then she raced into the great hall. She got to the Slytherin table to find Alex and her friends walking into the hall just after her. She grabbed Alex's arm and hauled her into the entrance hall. "What's you're problem?"
"You'll never guess what happened!" Chelsea told Alex what happened. Alex snuck to the Earth Kingdom to track down her friend who lived there. Apparently there was a similar school there as well. Alex invited herself to stay with her friend, Daniel, while she went to this school. He lived alone and didn't really mind. After all, she had been planning to stay the summer anyway. Alex went back to Hogwarts, just barely making it to the end of dinner. After dinner they talked for a bit and resolved to tell Lyssa the next day.
Lyssa smiled to herself, staring at the sink in the washroom she was currently in. The water was pouring out of the tap, and then taking a drastic U-turn to fly around the room. Either gravity was under construction, or Lyssa had finally started to use her powers at will. She was still smiling as she wandered around the castle. That is, until she was attacked from behind. Someone grabbed her arm and tugged it so she was turned around.
It was her sisters. The minute Lyssa was facing them they both starting blurting something out at the same time. They were half yelling. Oh great, they probably got into another fight and wanted to get Lyssa to straighten it out.
"One at a time."
They explained the situations with where they were going to school the next year. When she found out what actually happened she didn't know what to think. She had been planning on spending the summer trying to track down any living blood relatives they had left. She didn't know how she was going to afford to go back to Hogwarts the next year. It's not like the Malfoy's were going to pay for her or anything.
This problem was fixed, strangely enough, by Atlas. She had declared that Lyssa was, indeed, able to use her power at will. She had also declaired that some air nymph living in Bristol had agreed to take Lyssa in for the summer, which luckily inculded paying for her school supplies. She was a writer and had no family, so she was relitively flush and willing to help out a kid of her species.
"I'll tell her thanks when I see her, but that doesn't solve the problem of next year, and how I am supposed to learn to control water. There isn't a place for water nymphs to go. Even if there was it would probably be underwater and I need to breathe."
Atlas scowled. "Of course there's a place for water creatures. There's one for every element. The fire ones go to Hell, the nice ring of course. The place where people get thrown for selling out or being just a bit too much of a bitch. Earth type goes to the Earth Kingdom. Air users go to Heaven, but they can't stay there for too long periods of time whilst they're still alive. There's even a place for the creatures who only use prophesy! Some canyon in the middle of nowhere that's supposed to give you visions of the future."
Lyssa waited in suspense to find out where this place she could go was. No apparent answer was forthcoming. Atlas started to walk away. "Hello!" Lyssa called.
"Hi." Atlas said, still walking.
Lyssa ran a bit and caught up. "So what is this place?"
"A lost city. It sank under the sea and blah blah blah and now only the water nymphs, elementals, and etc can get to it."
"It's underwater? But I can't breathe underwater."
"There's sort of a bubble around it. You'll be fine. But you aren't going there yet."
"I'm not?"
"Unfortuantely, no. The powers that be have decided that I have to teach you more first. You have to have some basics before you go to this school. You can go to Hogwarts for the next year then hopefully by the end of the year you can go to the special school and I won't have to teach you anymore." Atlas walked away, smiling at the thought. Lyssa woke up, into her bed at Hogwarts. It was the last day of the school year.
It was the end of the year feast. It seemed like it had gone pretty fast, but Lyssa was just glad she hadn't been kidnapped again. Excluding the couple minutes where she had been tied up in the third floor corridor.
The feast flew by. Lyssa hung out with Katie and her Quidditch nut friends. She wasn't that sad to be leaving. She would be back next year. The next morning the whole group got on the train. Katie, Holly, Eve, Erik, and the triplets. Even Cho and her friend Maria were in there, even though it felt like they hadn't talked to the others much since the beginning of the year. All of them in one compartment. Alex and Holly had to sit on the floor. They weren't happy about it. Eve had volunteered to sit on Chelsea's lap so she wouldn't take up a seat but wouldn't have to sit on the floor. Eventually she was kicked off when Chelsea's legs fell asleep.
For Chelsea and Alex the realisation that they were probably never going back to Hogwarts didn't hit until the fun ended and they pulled up to Kings Cross station. Everyone filed off the train, lugging their trunks after them. They said goodbye to Cho and Maria on the train, then exited farther down to get to where their parent were. The remaining members of their group found some space away from the crowd surrounding the train and stood around awkwardly in a circle. Then all of a sudden Chelsea teared up and tackled Katie. "I'm gonna miss you! What if there isn't a Quidditch team at my new school? Who will I argue about teams to!" she started to wail. They had been pretty close. As close as they could be without the rest of their houses (especially the Slytherins) noticing and doing something about it.
Alex went and hugged Holly. She stepped back. "Make sure Draco doesn't piss off the seventh years. And promise to still be a bitch. I'm not sure if my fragile reality can deal with a world where you aren't!" Alex fake sniffed dramatically.
Holly slapped her arm, smiling. They hugged again. "Great, now I'm going to be stuck being best friends with Eve." Holly muttered. Alex laughed. Chelsea and Alex said their goodbyes to Eve.
Lyssa said hers to Katie and Erik. Those ones were pretty much just the, "Hey, see you next year. Write me over the summer." sort of things. Then everyone's parents were there. And they left. As they walked off, Chelsea had an idea. She had the rare chance to tell the Queen of gossip something she didn't already know. She moved back over to Eve and whispered in her ear. "Alex has a crush on the captain of the Quidditch team the Chudley Cannons."
Eve laughed quietly. "Aren't they supposed to be like the worst quidditch team ever?"
"Unless you count the Slytherin house team this year." Katie chimed in from beside them.
The triplets were left standing more or less alone together (as alone as you can be in a crowded train station). They squeezed each others hands. "We'll find a way to write, and stay in contact, right?" Lyssa asked. Her sisters might be childish and annoying, but she didn't want to never see them again.
"Sure!" Chelsea answered quickly. "We can both make portal type things. We can sneak out of school and see you or at least leave you a note."
"Oh sure, don't make any attempt to stay in touch with me." Alex rolled her eyes.
"I'll keep letters for you guys. When we see each other I'll pass them on!" Lyssa answered.
"So. We're staying together?"
"We better." Chelsea answered, squeezing Alex's hand hard, making a point.
Dominic cleared his throat from somewhere behind Alex, whose back was to the crowd. Chelsea looked over and smiled a bit. "Well I guess I've got to go." she said.
Alex looked over and Daniel was standing off to the side trying not to intrude. "Me too."
Group hug. Then they walked away. Each starting sort of a new life. Chelsea with Vampira, Dominic, and occasionally Dracula. Alex with her friend Daniel in the Earth Kingdom. Lyssa was starting out on her own, searching for their birth parents. She needed to know what happened to them. Eventually she would go to Atlantis and start over completely from scratch. Chelsea and Dominic went off to find a shady corner to make a portal in; Alex and Daniel did the same in a different shady corner. Lyssa made her way to the platform exit, taking one last look back at each of her sisters. They smiled at each other and all stepped out of the platform.
A/N - I have some extra information, just some random stuff that didn't make it in, and about what the story was originally supposed to be like. I'll post it if anyone wants me to, but unless that happens, the series is done. Gotta say, I'm pretty happy. It's been four years after all.
Final Word Count: 37,457