The Trio Who Returned
Chapter 05
by Technomad
In the cellar under 12 Grimmauld Place, three friends stirred from the sleep forced on them by the sunlight. "Pity it isn't winter," remarked Hermione, as she unself-consciously peeled out of her blouse and examined it for dust and dirt.
"Why d'you say that, Hermione?" asked Ron. He slapped at his clothes, knocking the dirt of the cellar off them. "I should owl my mum and have her send me some new clothes."
"You could just go and fetch them...oh." Harry looked rather sheepish, which sat oddly on his sharp, predatory face. "Your mum'd spot differences in you, and you don't want to cast the 'fluence on her or any of your family, do you?"
"Got it in one, mate. Besides, I've the red thirst on me, bad, and I don't know yet if I can trust myself around anybody till I've fed."
"To answer your first question, Ron," Hermione drawled, slipping back into her blouse, "in winter, we'd have hours more of darkness to operate in. This is summer, and at this latitude, that means long, long days and shortish nights."
"Be thankful for small mercies, Hermione," Harry said, as he polished his glasses and put them on. "If we were even as far north as Oslo, this time of year, we'd almost have no night at all. I don't know if they've any nosferatu there, but they'd have a right bad time of it there in summer."
"And make up for it in winter, when there's but a few hours of daylight, and that thin and weak," Hermione said, and left with the last word.
A few hours later, they gathered in the sitting room. They had fed earlier, by the simple expedient of wandering through a dodgy area looking affluent, and luring some alley-bashers into a nice, secluded place. All three of them now looked ruddy and healthy, if not slightly bloated; there had been two or even three alley-bashers apiece, and Hermione had urged them not to leave such people about to prey on those who, unlike them, couldn't fight back.
"So, Hermione. Care to find out what your meat-puppet's doing?" Harry looked at Hermione expectantly.
Hermione gave her friend a slightly disgusted look. "His mind's like a mud puddle...shallow and dirty. On the good side, he's easy to control, and he never suspects that I'm there." She sat back and her eyes rolled back in her head.
Voldemort was angry…and worried, as well. His best efforts, including forced Legilimency and even extracting magical oaths, hadn't succeeded in finding out who had squealed about the Azkaban mission. Could the Aurors have just taken the prisoners elsewhere, and kept it quiet so that people wouldn't get upset? Little though he liked it, that was the only conclusion that made sense.
His red eyes searched the room. Death Eaters were gathered around…but there was one missing face. "Alecto…where is your brother?"
Alecto Carrow's doughy face went pale, her black-currant eyes scrunching up. "I…I don't know, my Lord. He's not been about at all lately. Did you send him on some sort of mission?"
"The last time I saw him, he said he was going into London. He said he had a new spell, a new killing spell, he wanted to try out. Has he gone on a Muggle-hunting expedition?" Voldemort's voice sunk to a low hiss. "Without inviting the rest of us?"
"I'm shocked! Shocked! To think that Carrow would do such a thing, and to us, his dearest friends in all the world!" That was Walden Macnair; he combined utter bloodthirstiness to all outsiders with a willingness to suck up that the Dark Lord found endlessly entertaining.
"I wonder…could he have been the one who blabbed?" And Wormtail dared to enter the discussion. Warming to his idea, he continued: "I mean, he had it fairly easy while Our Lord was…away… He might have been 'turned,' I think is the term."
"That's a possibility," Voldemort conceded. "Or it could be our dear friend Severus."
"Er, my lord?" Snape spoke up. "To have betrayed your plan, we'd have needed to know about it in enough time to contact the Ministry. None of us knew about it who were out of your sight and hearing until just before 'go-time.'"
"That's true, Severus. Once again, you show that you're as valuable a Death Eater as I have. However, I do wonder what happened to our friend Amycus?" Voldemort sat back, puzzling about it. "Do any of you know of his current haunts in London?"
Several Death Eaters gave addresses, and Voldemort sent Death Eaters to investigate them.
Hermione murmured: "The Death Eaters suspect that Amycus Carrow might have betrayed them. They're checking his known hideouts." She gave her friends a list of locations, and Harry smiled; one of those locations was very close to where they were, in Grimmauld Place.
"He probably was lurking there, hoping to catch us," Ron mused. "Even though the Death Munchers can't get into this place, they do know where it is."
"And now we know where they are, don't we?" Harry's look became very predatory. "Shall we arrange a little surprise for a few of our masked friends?"
All three friends nodded solemnly, eyes dancing with unholy glee.
When the Death Eaters got to Amycus Carrow's little hideaway near Grimmauld Place, all was dark and quiet. They didn't notice three bats hanging from the eaves of the house; the eaves were several stories up and it was a dark, cloudy London night. The street lights did little to relieve the gloom.
Once the Death Eaters were inside, Harry, Ron and Hermione fluttered down, turned into mist, and oozed on inside. The Death Eaters were still utterly unaware of their presence.
"There's dust on things," one of them commented. "Carrow, to give him his due, was a fanatical housekeeper. He wouldn't have let that happen. He hasn't been here in a while."
"Did he leave any notes?"
"Let me see…" A Death Eater began going through Carrow's escritoire. "Ah, here we go! He kept a diary!"
"I would have bet he couldn't read or write…" muttered another Death Eater, as they all crowded around to look at the diary. They were so absorbed, reading Carrow's scrawls, that when Harry, Ron and Hermione turned from mist back into human form, nobody noticed.
The first they knew that they were not alone was when Hermione purred: "My, that does look interesting! I love to read…may I see?" They whirled, to find themselves faced with the Dark Lord's worst enemy and his two sidekicks.
"YOU!"
"Yes, 'us,'" Harry said, smiling hungrily. "You were wondering what happened to Carrow?" He proudly pointed to himself and his two friends, who were staring at the Death Eaters like they had been starving for a week and the evil sorcerers were a Christmas feast.
The Death Eaters drew their wands, only to be startled when their curses had little or no effect on the trio. "Oooh, that tickles!" Hermione giggled, when hit with the Cruciatus Curse. "Shall I show you?" She whipped out her own wand and screamed "Crucio!" The Death Eater that had cursed her crumpled, screaming like a lost soul.
At this, the Death Eaters began throwing curses and hexes and jinxes, to no avail. After a few minutes, seeing Harry, Ron and Hermione standing there completely unscathed, not even bothering to defend themselves, the evil sorcerers decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and tried to Apparate to safety…to no avail.
Ron gave them a carnivorous grin. "Aw, did you think you could get away?" He shook his head. "You didn't notice us setting up an Anti-Apparition Jinx, did you?" He raised his finger, tut-tutting like a parent facing a naughty child. "You walked right into our trap! 'Come into our parlor, said the spiders to the flies!'"
"It's the prettiest little parlor that ever met your eyes!" Hermione chimed in, her face wrapped in an evil, gleeful smile…she quite resembled Pansy Parkinson at that moment, Harry thought, but knew better than to mention it to his friend. Hermione, he was painfully aware, had a temper-and-a-half on her, and few inhibitions about showing it.
"We don't need wands to take care of trash like you," Harry purred. He reached out and grabbed the nearest Death Eater, who writhed helplessly in his grip…for a second, Harry was reminded of the time he'd seen a feral cat grabbing a baby rabbit. The Death Eater's terrified scream was very like a louder version of the noise the rabbit had made.
The Death Eater's futile attempts to resist brought the red thirst surging up from where it usually slumbered, and before Harry could stop himself, he cocked his head back and sank his fangs into the sorcerer's throat, greedily drinking the rich red essence of life. As the blood filled his stomach, he felt strength surging through him, strength, well-being, and power.
The other Death Eaters had merely stared in horror as Harry battened on their friend, and hardly even resisted as Ron and Hermione followed Harry's lead, going for their throats and tearing them open with razor-sharp fangs to feast on the sorcerers' lifeblood.
There was no reason to hold back, so when Harry, Ron and Hermione stopped, there were three dead, desanguinated Death Eaters at their feet. Harry drew a long, deep breath…he no longer needed to breathe, but it was a habit of long-standing that he found himself falling back into.
Looking at his two friends, he saw that they were bloated and ruddy, with red-tinged eyes. Hermione's eyes were half-closed, and her lips were parted; he could see her nipples sticking out against the front of her shirt. Harry could feel his own arousal.
"Let's get rid of these three, and clean the place up so that it looks as though nobody's been here," Harry whispered. He hated to break the mood, but they had work still to do. Every living Death Eater was a terrible threat, while if they could take Voldemort's followers down without him knowing that there was a systematic plan to eliminate them, they could isolate the Dark Lord and then deal with him at their leisure.
Looking as though they'd been interrupted in the middle of a lovemaking session, Ron and Hermione moved to obey.
END Chapter 05