The Trio Who Returned
Chapter 08
by Technomad
As evening fell, life returned to the Trio. Once the sun was below the horizon, Harry, Ron and Hermione stirred, opening their coffins and sitting up. Harry grinned at Hermione ruefully. "I feel like I'm acting in a horror movie." Both friends laughed at the thought. "At least I'm not speaking in some sort of cheesy East European accent!"
"Did you notice that I used a line from Dracula?" Hermione raised one of her thick dark eyebrows in a questioning expression. "I thought it was quite appropriate."
"So did I. Trust you, Hermione, to come up with a good quote." At Ron's puzzled look, Harry explained: "When Lord Thingy came here, she said 'enter freely, and of your own will.' That's a famous line from the original novel, Dracula, and gets used in a lot of the movie versions."
"I'd have said 'come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly,' but I suppose you know best," Ron commented. He stood up, stepping out of his coffin. Shutting it, he remarked: "After we see to our guest, I want to feed. The red thirst is on me."
"It's on all of us, Ron," said Harry, exiting his coffin and closing it. He looked at it thoughtfully. "You know, it occurs to me that we're among the few who not only go into a coffin, but come out of it again!"
All three of them laughed at that thought.
Lord Voldemort hung in his bonds, his face slack and his mouth open. A string of drool hung from his lips, nearly reaching the floor. Hermione wrinkled her nose. "He's forgotten that he's toilet-trained, hasn't he?" she said, drawing her wand and cleaning the mess that Voldemort had made when he'd lost control of his bowels and bladder.
"I wish his Death Eaters could see him now!" Ron gloated. "They'd never take him seriously again!"
"Who's left among the Death Eaters, anyway?" Harry looked thoughtful. "Wormtail's right over here…" he absently aimed a kick at the inert form of the former Marauder…"and most of the others are dead, aren't they?"
Harry stared into Voldemort's red, unfocussed eyes. "Near as I can tell from the mess we made of this one's mind, about the only ones left are the Malfoys. They don't dare go near Malfoy Manor, though. They're holed up at the old Riddle House. Vol-au-vent here," he gave Voldemort a mocking chuck under the chin, "used it as a headquarters."
"Stupid of him," Ron sneered. "In his shoes, I'd have found someplace that no Death Eaters had ever been associated with. But then, he always was stupid. And overconfident."
"Let's take care of that red thirst," Hermione headed for the door, effectively ending the conversation. "Then let's go Horcrux hunting."
OOO
Wearing skimpy, provocative clothing, Hermione Granger staggered along toward a dark park. Grimmauld Place, luckily for the Trio, stood in a dodgy part of London, which made hunting a great deal easier.
Earlier, Hermione had bought a couple of small bottles of cheap whiskey, and splashed them on herself. Now, she looked for all the world like a silly slapper who'd had too much to drink, easy bait for any would-be rapists in the vicinity. And, sure enough, a small group of young men were following her, closely enough to not lose sight of her, but not so close that she would be suspicious if she turned and happened to catch sight of them.
Finally, Hermione stumbled into the park, sitting down on a bench a little way inside. "Got to sit down for a few minutes. Got to clear my head," she mumbled. "Dear God, how much did I drink?"
A few minutes later, she was surrounded. "Well, well, what have we here?" asked the leader of the young men. "My, you're a pretty one. Care to come with me and me pals for a little fun?"
Hermione stared at them woozily. "No…no. Just need to clear my head. Drinking contest at that party I was at…" The young men grinned and grabbed her by the arms, hauling her to her feet. Hermione shrieked. "Let go of me! Let me go!"
"Oh, no," one of them laughed. "We've got you and we're going to have some fun with you!" Suddenly he felt himself gripped in his turn, with an inhumanly strong, cold grasp, and whirled around to face an angry, chalky-white face with red-rimmed green eyes under a shock of messy black hair. His companions were in a similar fix; one of them was being held by the woman they'd found, who suddenly didn't seem drunk at all, or attractive at all, while the other was having his arms twisted up behind his back by a very pale-looking, red-eyed redhead.
OOO
When they were done, the Trio hid their latest victims' corpses in a deep thicket. The park looked like it didn't see a lot of traffic, and there was a good chance that they wouldn't be found for a while. They looked at each other, their formerly pale, drawn faces now ruddy and full of life.
"I've got to say, this does have some advantages," Hermione said thoughtfully. "Killing would-be rapists, and Death Eaters, I mean. It makes me feel better about what we've become."
"Any of those scum could have victimised Ginny, if she hadn't been born with magic," Ron growled, low in his throat. He had been particularly rough with his victim, and the man's head now lolled on a neck that mainly consisted of his spinal cord. Ron had torn and ripped most of the flesh off his neck.
"You think of your sister when we do that sort of thing?" Harry asked, curiously. "I remember some of the things Snape told us, about where he grew up on the wrong side of my mum's home town. He saw things that no child should ever see."
"Well, it's neither here nor there, people. Come on! We've Horcruxes to hunt!" And with that, the Trio Disapparated.
OOO
The Riddle House in Little Hangleton looked deserted, at least to Muggle eyes. The few remaining inhabitants were careful not to show lights at night. However, Harry, Ron and Hermione could sense the people within, like smelling delicious food while walking past a restaurant.
Entry was no problem for them. They had managed to extort permission from Voldemort, who was the legal owner of the domicile, so they could go and come as they pleased. If Voldemort regained enough of his wits to remember what they had done, and withdraw his invitation, they'd have to leave quickly, but they thought there was little chance of that.
Silent as shadows, they began searching. Hermione hissed when they opened one door. Harry and Ron came to see what she had come across.
Sleeping in a big four-poster bed, side-by-side, were Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy. Harry's eyes went wide when he began to consider the possibilities. Casting the 'fluence to make sure the couple would not awaken, the Trio slipped on in and stood around the bed, like three angels of death.
Hermione held up a restraining hand, and took an unresisting Narcissa's hand. Pulling it out, she pulled the sleeve of her nightgown back, and all three vampires' eyes widened at the sight of the Dark Mark, ugly and black against the creamy skin.
"Where these two idiots are, that wanker they spawned isn't likely to be too far away," Ron whispered, although they could have spoken normally and the Malfoys would not have awakened from their enforced slumber. They knew that Nagini could be anywhere, though, and none of them would be happy until the giant snake was dead.
"Let's try across the hall," Harry murmured, too low for anybody not right there to hear. The three glided out and across the hall, and began opening doors softly. Sure enough, in the third room they tried, Draco Malfoy was asleep. Beside him was Nagini, who was wide awake. At their entrance, the snake uncoiled, moving to the attack with a hiss like a mortally-wounded steam engine.
Nagini clearly thought that she had nothing but ordinary humans, possibly magical, but still ordinary in other ways, to deal with. Even on a snake, her surprise when Harry stepped forward, gripping her by the throat and whirling her around like a meteor hammer. Her hiss became clearly a distress noise, and Harry hissed back in Parseltongue. When Harry stopped spinning her, Nagini had clearly lost all stomach for the fight, but her attempts to get away did her no good, as Harry gripped her neck with both hands and twisted her head clean off.
With the snake dead, and the Horcrux within it neutralised, the Trio turned their attention to Draco. They all owed the blond pureblood payback in various forms…Hermione's eyes suddenly lit with a red, predatory gleam, and she turned to her friends with a carnivorous smile. "I've just had the most wonderful idea!"
OOO
Around noon of that day, Auror Tonks and several of her colleagues cautiously entered the big Victorian mansion just outside Little Hangleton. They'd been sent there by Kingsley Shacklebolt, who had received an anonymous note saying that it was a place they'd find very interesting indeed.
Within a very few minutes, they had clear evidence that this place had been a hive of Death Eater activity. Death Eater masks and robes, manuals of the Dark Arts, lists of those to be targeted by the Death Eaters, lists of Death Eater sympathisers who had not come forward openly…all of those would alone have made the raid one of the more rewarding ones the Aurors had gone on since the return of the Dark Lord. But what they found in an upstairs bedroom was the piece de resistance.
The horrified Aurors found themselves gazing on a scene of slaughter. Side by side, the unclothed, dead bodies of Lucius, Narcissa and Draco Malfoy hung by their heels from the ceiling. Their throats had been torn open, and not a drop of blood remained in their bodies. At first, the sight of the dead family riveted the Aurors' eyes, but as they got used to it, they started noticing other things.
Below them was the body of a huge snake, a poisonous serpent much larger than any found in nature, with its head torn from its body. It had been arranged in a figure-eight, obviously by whoever had killed it.
And, the Aurors finally noticed, although the Malfoys and the snake had been drained of blood, not a drop of blood was to be found, anywhere.
END Chapter 08