CHAPTER 11:

ON THE NUANCES OF VAMPIRE PUBERTY

"Now, what's better than being a ridiculously overpowered vampire?" Luna asked not long afterwards (and managing to calm Hermione down from any strangulation attempts on her person).

After a moment of looking at each other, wondering whether this was a rhetorical question, the three other vampires (Remus and Sirius looking on) shrugged, before Hermione put her hand up. "Nothing?"

"Nope, but five points to Hermione Granger for trying. Oh, wait, it's rude to point. Okay, five blunts to her(1)."

"I don't smoke cannabis. Or anything for that matter," Hermione said. She left unsaid the fact that, due to recent events, she was strongly considering taking up drinking. She was a vampire now, she could regenerate her liver.

"Lily used to smoke weed," Sirius remarked. "That's how James finally snagged her, right, Moony(2)?"

Moony met Harry's sceptical look, and nodded. "Long story."

"Anyway," Luna said, getting attention back to her, "the correct answer to my question is: an even MORE ridiculously overpowered vampire! As vampires age and or drink the blood of enough people and absorb their souls, our powers grow. Think of it as the vampiric equivalent of puberty, only you can go through it after puberty, and instead of acne, you get cool superpowers. Just like the X-Men."

"Except the X-Men weren't blood-sucking fiends," Tonks muttered.

"Well, we aren't just blood-sucking fiends. We're blood-sucking friends!" Luna declared. "We are the inner circle of the Pudding Club!"

"Umm, Luna, I've been meaning to tell you," Remus said hesitantly. "But that name…it's a bit weird. Don't you know that 'the Pudding Club' is a euphemism for being pregnant?"

Luna tilted her head. "Of course I know, I'm a Ravenclaw. The better question is, do I give a damn? There's a number of very good reasons why I call this the Pudding Club, which have nothing to do with pregnancy. One, it's funny. Two, I like pudding. Three, who would expect a coven of vampires to be called the Pudding Club? Well, unless we call ourselves the Black Pudding Club, but that's a stretch. Anyway, back to vampire puberty. Thanks to the Death Eaters and other ne'er-do-wells that we ate as part of a balanced diet…we are now on the poise of vampire puberty."

Tonks frowned. "How do you know?"

"I checked our character sheets," Luna said, before pulling from who-knew-where a sheaf of papers which she handed out to her fellow vampires.

Hermione stared at the sheet of paper blankly (not that she was alone in doing so: Harry and Tonks were doing the same thing). After a few seconds, she asked, "I don't know what to be frustrated by more: where you got these from, how they exist, or why my character class is 'Bossy Know-It-All'."

"Mine's 'Clumsy Metamorph Auror'," Tonks growled in a good imitation of 'Mad-Eye' Moody.

"And mine is 'Hapless Messianic Archetype'," Harry said flatly. Then, his eyes roved up the page, and he actually smiled. "Huh, would you look at that? I'm already level 27."

"Nobody cares about the size of your level!" Hermione snapped in annoyance. "Anyway, experience levels are arbitrary bullshit anyway!"

"They're fun arbitrary bullshit," Luna said. She then fished a pair of reading glasses from out of the air (that wouldn't have looked out of place perched on the face of Elton John), and placed them on her face. "Anyway, perks, new abilities. One of these, and one of these, and ooh, one of those! Now…ooh! I'm definitely picking that one!"

"What one is that?" Tonks asked.

Luna merely grinned, showing off her array of fangs, before ticking a box on her character sheet. She ticked a few off, and then put it back whence it came. Maybe it was hammerspace. Maybe it was some eldritch location beyond the fourth wall. Or maybe she just knew how to create dimensional pockets any TARDIS would be jealous of.

Meanwhile, her three vampire friends, subjects, and future harem were poring over their character sheets. Harry began investing more in his general strength and stamina in particular (thanks to the Dursleys' tender ministrations), but put a few more points into intelligence and luck. Hermione, of course, invested more in intelligence and magic power. And Tonks? Well, she put more into dexterity. Hey, the girl was clumsy.

Anyway, they soon came to abilities, and after some careful consideration, they chose their abilities. Luna took the character sheets away and sent them whence they came. "So…what the hell was that all about?" Hermione asked, dreading the answer.

"Becoming harder, better, faster, stronger," Luna smirked. "Let me give you an example with some ancient and eldritch words."

"Please don't summon Shub-Niggurath in the room," Remus groaned.

"Hey, that needs at least a hundred words in the incantation…unless you're on her good list, in which case, you can just ring her phone number," Luna said. "Plus, you need a can of surströmming(3). She's acquired a taste for it. You know how you have weird cravings when pregnant? Well, she's had a thousand young, and the cravings for rotten, fermented fish in a can never really went away."

Remus stared at her flatly, before he said, "You know what? I can believe that Shub-Niggurath likes surströmming. Seriously, Padfoot poured a can of that over my head once for a prank. I had to burn my school robes and swim twelve laps naked in the Black Lake, during the winter I might add, before I was allowed back in Hogwarts Castle. And that was without going into the scores of Scourgify spells I had to endure!"

"On the bright side," Sirius said as Remus glared pointedly at him, "we made Snape vomit copiously from the smell. Plus, the ladies were impressed at how big you were, even after swimming through an ice cold lake."

"Padfoot, have a nice cup of shut the fuck up." Remus then turned to Luna. "Anyway, what words were you talking about?"

"Oh, they're only two. ZA WARUDO!"

Things seemed to strobe briefly from positive to negative (accompanied by a sound that was a mix between a clock grinding to a halt and what sounded like some eldritch entity's flatulence), but by the end of it, Sirius and Remus were embracing each other and kissing, Tonks was stripped to her underwear, and both Harry and Hermione were gurning in ways that would have made the inhabitants of Egremont proud(4). Oh, and Luna was dancing the Macarena on the ceiling of the room. But for Luna, that would fit the admittedly very loose definition of normal for her, even before she became a vampire.

Remus and Sirius broke away from each other hurriedly, Tonks blinked, and then glared at her state of deshabille, and Hermione and Harry brought their faces back to normal, massaging them. "What the hell was that?" Tonks demanded.

"Za Warudo," Luna said. "Or 'The World' if you're not a pedantic little weeaboo with too much time on your hands. I can stop time temporarily. Even summon steamrollers to squish people with."

"Why steamrollers?" Harry asked, before wondering whether he would regret asking that question.

"Well, aside from tradition, it's funny. I got the idea from a dream I had, where we were slaughtering Death Eaters, only for me to sneeze because a parallel universe equivalent of me was talking smack about me behind my back(5). I then got to talk to her in her dreams, and she said she could freeze time at will. And I decided, I wanted it. So, what did you get from going through vampire puberty?"

"Please stop saying that," Hermione said. Then, after a moment, she added, "Well, I chose the one called 'Bored Now'. Involves flaying someone alive with merely a thought. Dunno why that's called 'Bored Now', though. I figured I could use the skin of the Death Eaters for book covers."

"Nice," Luna said, nodding approvingly. "Now…Nym…GURK!" Luna collapsed to the ground, her tongue lolling out of her mouth.

"I put a moratorium on anyone calling me by my first name. I was surprised that was on the character sheet…or that even worked," Tonks said casually. "Every time someone calls me by my first name, they stop breathing for ten seconds. Or they shit their pants. Or they get suddenly and uncontrollably itchy. I've made it so only my parents are immune."

"That is incredibly and creatively spiteful, Tonks," Luna gasped hoarsely as she began breathing again, before giving an enthusiastic thumbs-up. "Kudos!"

"What can I say? Revenge is a dish best served cold."

"And with sprinkles! No, no, with dragées!"

"What?" Tonks asked.

"Dragées are the little edible ball-bearing like things you have on cakes," Hermione explained not-so-patiently. Though she wasn't impatient with Tonks: it was Luna's insanity that was irritating her.

Luna nodded so fast, she should have broken her neck. She didn't, and even if she did, her vampiric regeneration would have healed her faster than you can say 'Looney Lovegood'. She then turned to Harry. "So, what did you get for Vampire Puberty Day?"

"Stop that," Harry said. "Anyway, I wanted to bring back the dead, but unfortunately, I couldn't on the character sheet. But then I found something really cool. Something I wish I had when I was fighting the Basilisk. I was thinking, how am I going to stop some idiot Death Eater from tearing me a structurally superfluous new behind? The answer? Use a magic spear." A spear made of blue, glowing light appeared hovering above Harry. "And if that don't work, use more spears." A veritable cloud of spears formed in the air above Harry, a blizzard of pointy magic weapon death just waiting to be unleashed on the world, and turning anyone and anything into burger meat.

Luna blinked, before she asked, "Do you have any one-eyed fish monster in you?"

Harry dispelled the spears with a wave of his hand. "Uhh, what?"

"Never mind. Anyway, we've undergone our vampire puberty…"

"Stop that," everyone else in the room said.

"…And now, it's time for the next phase of the plan to begin!" Luna said, pointing her finger to the ceiling.

"I don't think we even have a plan," Harry said. "I think you're making it up as you go along."

"Well, that's the writer's fault. He's making it up as he goes along. Anyway, what do we do with Dumbledore and Voldemort? Well, we can't kill them yet. As OP as we are, we're not quite yet at the level where we're guaranteed a victory, let alone a curbstomp where we're doing the stomping. Plus, the story has to go on for a bit longer. Which is why we're going to do a bit of gastronomical tourism."

"…What?" Tonks asked.

"Oh, we're going to be breaking into Muggle prisons, nomming on the worst inmates. Like Kira, only, we're vampires, and brave enough to do it in person. Oh, and we actually eat the inmates, not giving them heart attacks using a death god's notebook."

They just stared at her (which was becoming a frequent occurrence lately), before Hermione said, "Okay, fine. Let's do that. At least it's something constructive…"

"Oh, and where's Hedwig, Luna?" Harry asked.

"Well…"

It was a candle-lit table with dinner for two. A pair of rather magnificent-looking people sat across from each other. One was a man with red and gold-coloured hair, proud and handsome, but with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. The other was an elegant white-haired woman, beautiful, with golden eyes.

"How did you change us like that?" the woman asked.

The man smirked, gently sloshing a wine glass filled with petrol. "I've lived for a few centuries, I pick up a few tricks," he remarked. "Of course, the old goat bound me to him. Not that I didn't already have bindings, thanks to those four idiots. I swear, Rowena was a prude who makes McGonagall look like a party girl by comparison, Godric was a hotheaded lunatic, and Salazar loved that Basilisk of his a little too much. Helga was the only sane one. And Dumbledore, he named me Fawkes, after a terrorist! And the way he strokes my feathers…" The man shuddered. "Just as well he doesn't know I could do this. I'd be his catamite before you can say 'burn, baby burn'."

"You're older than he is," the woman pointed out.

"You're the long-lived magical snowy owl," the man said with a shrug. "Most snowy owls live for ten years, but you're…"

"Twenty-five. And I hope to live a long and healthy life."

"Meh, you're Harry Potter's familiar. Unless you're lucky, that won't be compatible with a long life. Anyway, your glass has some Elixir of Life I swiped from Flamel's stash when he wasn't looking," the man said.

The woman nodded, and drank some. Her face screwed up in disgust. "Ugh, and the aftertaste! How does Flamel stand drinking it day in and day out?"

"He and Perenelle use Listerine. This century, at least," the man said. "Don't worry, the food will taste that much sweeter by comparison."

"I hope so. It's a bit of a faux pas to take someone on a date and give them below-par food," the woman said.

"Now now, my dear Hedwig," the man said. "Just sit back and enjoy the meal."

"If you say so, Fawkes…"

CHAPTER 11 ANNOTATIONS:

So, vampire puberty, and some Hedwig/Fawkes. The sad thing is, I haven't written the first Hedwig/Fawkes fiction on this website. Plus, see if you can spot the cavalcade of references with the vampire puberty powers.

Review-answering time! Yes! I traumatised a LOT of people with the last chapter. Just a quick point, though. Nagini was humanoid, she didn't become like a lamia, half-human, half-snake. She was basically a sexy woman with scales, fangs, and eyes. I was thinking something not unlike Delphyne Gorgon from Marvel Comics, only with normal hair instead of snakes.

DZ2: Thanks a bunch. Of course, you only have yourself to blame for inspiring this fic in the first place. ;)

PersonaQeminod1: I considered doing a Disgaea crossover once, but never got around to starting it in earnest. That being said, I do turn Voldemort, Dumbledore, and the Dursleys into Prinnys in my Highschool DXD crossover Fall to Zenith, and Serafall Leviathan basically plays soccer or volleyball with them.

Agrond: No, it doesn't.

Umbra NightFall: Yep. We do need to have stories where Deadpool and Luna meet. Hell, I think they've met in megamatt09's ongoing story Deadpool's New Job.

the black wolf in the mountain: At this time, no. In fact, if there's going to be a harem aside from Lunar Harmony, Tonks is the only additional member who will be added.

WhiteElfElder: Why are you asking for Lockhart? By this point in the story, he's been Obliviated of almost everything except perhaps for his toilet training.

PikaMew1288: …And here I was thinking that MY story ideas were weird…

DalkonCledwin: Umm, what title is that? If we're talking about the Greatest Wizard Since Merlin, well, Zelretch wouldn't care. Well, save for unleashing pranking hell on Dumbledore. And I don't know, but I certainly made Luna Zelretch's honorary niece in some of my Nasuverse crossovers.

Ultimate-Zelda-fan: Very easily. Besides, sexy Nagini is not a bad thing. And I never actually described the sex scene, just the prelude and the aftermath. So there. :P

1. I first read this joke in the first volume of Spike Milligan's memoirs, Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall.

2. In sakurademonalchemist's story Best Served Cold, this is actually how James managed to snag Lily. It makes so much sense, it's actually my personal fanon as to how the hell James and Lily hooked up. Give that a read, by the way. It chucks in some Hellsing goodness.

3. I first heard about this crap on the QI episode Horrible. It's apparently so smelly, that Stephen Fry stated on that programme that the insurers wouldn't let him open up the can, as the smell apparently lingers something fierce. As in, the studio would be unusable.

4. Egremont in Cumbria actually have a gurning competition. Gurning, for those of you not in the know, means face-pulling.

5. This is seen briefly in Just a Touch of Kleptomania, though this wasn't intended to be a dream at the time. I just wanted to do a reference to my own fic.