Harry, Draco and Ron: Vampire Hunters

Chapter III. Back down the rabbit hole.

When the wind fills the sky the clouds will move aside,
And there will be the road to all our dreams.
And for any day that stings two better days it brings,
Nothing is as bad as it seems.

- Manowar, "Master of the Wind".

Harry woke up to the familiar sound of an owl trying to force its way into the room. It was just minutes to seven in the morning, and the owl turned out to be Pig. He was carrying a letter from Ron!

"Hey there Harry!

Guess what, Dumbledore finally gave us permission to have you stay here for the rest of the summer! Ain't it great? Anyways, we'll be arriving by car on August the 4^th about noon. Let's hope your Muggles won't give us trouble this time, though Fred and George think they might be able to do something horrid to your cousin again...

Coming soon,

Ron."

Harry could not help but grin at this piece of news; it was more than he ever wished for - another summer with the Weasleys! When he came down for breakfast he cleared his throat dramatically to attract his aunt and uncle's attention.

"I'm leaving tomorrow," he said, "The Weasleys will pick me up--" however, he was rudely interrupted.

"WHAT?" Vernon Dursley boomed, "And you think that after what they did last time we'll let them in this house?"

"They won't actually go into the house. This time they'll come by car and I will take my stuff out myself, so they won't have to," Harry explained feebly.

It was a mighty battle of thoughts inside his uncle's mind, a battle obviously visible on his face, as it was deformed in a way that only deep and intense thinking might've deformed it. The battle was not an easy one - on one side of the weights he had Harry's absence from his life until the next summer, and on the other - the arrival of the Weasleys (the memory of the Ton-Tongue Toffee's effect on Dudley still bright in his memory) and nobody to work on Petunia's garden.

Actually, he did not care much about the garden, and, judging by the look on Petunia's face, she realised that as well, and was deeply afraid of the horrible fate time had in store for her garden in case Harry left.

"Alright boy, you might leave, but only if they don't get anywhere near the house and that you work on the garden both today and tomorrow. Understood?"

Harry nodded submissively. He could take just one-and-a-half more days of gardening work if freedom was the reason to do it. After eating, he returned to his work, thinking that with all that practice Herbology at school would be reduced to a meek theoretical subject, as all the practical jobs would be nothing compared to THIS. The day went on in its usual manner, nothing out of the simple, almost comforting, routine.

The evening came up pretty fast, and Harry went inside (after returning the tools to their proper places, he had half-a-day of work left after all) to eat. After that he went up, hoping that at least today he'll get some proper sleep...

In the morning Harry woke up with a feeling that while he is here, doing his usual things and just enjoying life (if one could enjoy life if he (or she) lived with the Dursleys), Voldemort is out there doing evil. Or just living and enjoying his life, what was evil all by itself.

He forced away all of the unhappy thoughts and focused on the task lying in front of him right now - packing his stuff up. After an hour or so of intense fighting with all his books he finally managed to cram everything into his trunk.

"I definitely need a new trunk and a larger one than this," he told himself.

*****

After eating, which seemed to last forever, as all of the Dursleys practically made the hatred towards him hang in the air, what, in turn, made it somewhat harder to breathe. Or, as Harry thought a bit later, it might've been just his imagination. With anticipation of freedom, he practically stormed out of the house to do the gardening. As he was plowing through the next patch of weeds, he heard the sound he was expecting so much - a car coming.

"Well, imagination can be deceitful," he thought as he found out that this particular car was not the one he needed, as it did not contain any of the Weasleys, but a thin balding man with grey hair.

A few minutes later, the one he was waiting for arrived. A green Ford Anglia, looking surprisingly like the blue one Harry and Ron flew to Hogwarts in their second year, drove up to Privet Drive, Number Four at exactly noon. Emerging out of it were Ron, George, Fred and Mr. Weasley, the latter had scanned the area around him as if looking something (or somebody) out upon arrival. When he noticed Harry, he waved at him.

"Hello Harry!" he said.

"Hello, Mr. Weasley," Harry replied. He then was forced to withstand the greeting of Fred and George, who looked as if they had recently won the entire world's supply of prank and joke-related stuff.

"Psst, Harry," Fred (or maybe George?) whispered, "We want you to know that we've put your money to er..."

"... good use!" George (or was it Fred?) finished for his brother.

"Yeah, and that we did get ickle Ronniekins a new set of dress robes!" Fred (at this point Harry stopped understanding what twin was who) added triumphantly.

"Just like you asked!" the other twin said.

"Are they decent-looking at least?" Harry asked. The twins nodded in reply.

"What're you whispering about?" Ron asked pointedly. The twins gave him identical you-really-don't-want-to-know grins and made themselves scarce.

"What was that all about?" Ron asked of Harry.

"All in good time, brother, all in good time!" Fred (or maybe George after all?) replied instead of Harry.

"All right Harry, let's go get your things and..." Mr. Weasley started as Harry interrupted him:

"I'm sorry Mr. Weasley, but my uncle still has some er... painful memories associated with your last visit. I'm afraid I'll have to carry them out on my own."

"Very well, though I can't imagine how you are going to do it on your own," Mr. Weasley said, frowning.

"Don't worry, Mr. Weasley, I'll manage it," Harry assured him (and himself as well, actually).

Harry dashed into the house and re-emerged several minutes later. Fred and George had spent this time productively, having caught several slugs and trying to force-feed them to Ron, who resisted with all his might, and, luckily enough, was saved from this horrible demise by Harry's arrival. The twins seized their activities of making Ron hate them even more than he ever wanted to and moved over to helping Harry pull his trunk to the car and load it in. The same was done to Hedwig's cage, Hedwig herself absent again. Once everything was loaded, they boarded the car and left down the road.

"Mr. Weasley, this car looks just like the... er... the one you had several years ago!" Harry said cheerfully.

"Well, it actually is the same car," Ron replied, "It was caught after all. Unfortunately, it had to be repaired and repainted, since life in the forest was not very easy for it."

"Oh. That means it's still on the fly?" Harry asked.

"Of course!" one of the twins said. Harry already had discarded even the very thought of telling them apart when they were not in the infamous Weasley family sweaters that had the first letters of their names on the fronts.

As the car drove out of town, Mr. Weasley turned onto a rather old and deserted-looking road and they took off into flight...

*****

Harry could not help but notice that Mr. Weasley was a much better pilot than Ron. Or maybe it had something to do with practice, he told himself.

When they arrived at the Burrow, safe and sound, the twins took Harry's trunk and Hedwig's cage and carried them off into the house. Harry's heart did something strange, however, when he saw Ginny. She smiled at him and he waved.

"Harry!" Ginny said when they were close enough to talk.

"Yes?" he replied.

"Why aren't you wearing it?"

"Wha-- oh, the ring! I've got it right here, see?" he said as he pulled it out of his pocket and slipped it onto his right hand finger. Suddenly, he felt very dizzy as if he gulped down a very large amount of butterbeer in one go, and the ground propelled itself towards him at a lightning-fast speed...

*****

...He was standing before a ruined building. He could not tell what it was, for it had thick and large walls, which were now crumbling to dust from age, and stained glass windows, though most of them were reduced to just a handful of shards barely hanging within the frames. The first meant it might be a castle, but the second pointed towards a church of some kind.

He looked at himself. His hands looked different... Not just different clothes, though the fact that he was wearing a set of chain mail armour was quite surprising, but a different body as well - the hands were quite muscular, and, actually, so was the rest of the body. He felt like a bodybuilding champion. He ran his hand through his hair only to notice that they definitely were longer than when he arrived at the Burrow, they also turned out to be blond. And, to add insult to injury, he was not wearing glasses, though his vision was quite clear. The scar was also gone from his forehead. Something was definitely amiss here...

*****

"What happened?" Ron asked, his voice just a fraction quieter from screaming.

"I don't know!" Ginny yelled back, "he put the ring on and then fell unconscious!"

"Let's get him into the house, quick!" Mr. Weasley said as he took Harry by his arms and Ron took him by the legs. They carried Harry's limp body into the house...

*****

He looked around himself, noticing the strange absence of sounds of nature. It seemed that the only sounds in this place were made by Harry himself - his breathing, his heart beating, his footsteps. The scenery was also not a very joyful one, as there was no grass, the only things besides the ruins and the hills in the distance being skeletons of trees that seemed to be all that was left from a burnt-out forest.

The inside of the strange building was as worn and aged as the outside. Harry suddenly wondered how old this building was if even Hogwarts didn't look that old. The entry hall looked long abandoned, the tapestries on the walls withered from the winds and the rains, which, evidently, poured through the hole in the ceiling. He walked through this room and into the corridor beyond, thinking that this probably was a temple after all, to judge by the inner architecture. The corridor was dark, filled with debris and things that looked suspiciously like human (and not-quite-human) bones and skulls (mostly skulls). Harry shuddered at the thought of what and why had put them all here, not even daring to wonder how whoever (or whatever) put them here came in possession of so many skulls in the first place.

Suddenly he saw some kind of movement beyond the door that was at the corridor's end. A shadow flew past the doorway and out of sight. Harry started walking slowly towards the door in question, having got used already to the faint sound his chain mail made when he walked. Past the door there was a small corner-like area with three ways out, through one he came; one of the other two was blocked by a collapsed section of the walls and ceiling.

"Well, I ain't got much of a choice, now do I?" he thought grimly as he turned to the archway that was the way onwards.

The next corridor had doors on either side of it, the shadow Harry was following slipped through the only open one, in the middle of the corridor. Harry followed it, opening the door a bit wider.

The room he just entered seemed to be furnished to be lived in, it had a wardrobe, a two-person bed, nightstands on both sides of it and even a small fireplace. What had struck horror into Harry's mind, however, was the fact that there were two dead bodies lying on the bed, side by side. One was definitely a man's body and the other one a woman's. Despite Harry's shock, he had noticed two interesting things about them - first, the bodies definitely did not look like they were here for a long time, while the building looked like it was abandoned for centuries, the two bodies on the bed looked as if they died only a week or so ago. Second was that the man bore a strange resemblance to Lucius Malfoy, while the woman - of his wife, Narcissa. Harry had only then noticed that there also was a mirror on one of the wardrobe doors, and, as he turned away from the bodies on the bed, he saw himself in it...

*****

He woke up in cold sweat, his breathing ragged, his heart pounding...

What, or, to be more precise, who he saw in the mirror had made him feel very, very scared. He was glad to find out that his vision was blurry once again, telling him he was back to normal (as long as the word 'normal' could be applied to him), as he noticed a blob of a flaming orange colour above him. There was no doubt that this person was a Weasley, but which one?

"How are you, Harry?" the blob asked. It turned out to be Ginny.

"F-f-fine," he stammered, "can I ha-have my glasses please?"

"Sure, here you are," she said. He reached out as she put them into his hand. After putting the glasses on, looking out the window and re-assuring himself that he, indeed, was at the Burrow again, he had finally calmed down.

"What happened?" he asked.

"I don't know really..." she replied, "You put on the ring and then you just blacked out, falling onto the floor. Just like when..." her voice trailed off as she started sobbing.

"...the dementors were near," he finished for her. She nodded. "Okay, let's go down and tell everyone that I'm fi-- Hey! Is this yo-- your room?" he asked, feeling a strange mix of surprise and shame.

"Er... yes," she replied, the familiar glint of mischief Harry had seen so often in the twins' eyes was now in her eyes as well.

"Oh, I see... Wait, I don't... Never mind. Let's go and calm everyone down," he said.

"Before I need calming myself!" he added in his thoughts.

*****

The next few days went past pretty fast, Harry getting used to living here once again, claiming (whenever asked about it) that the reason for his black-out was just too much of working in the open sun... And constantly thinking why he saw what he saw in that mirror in his dream...

If it was a dream.

"So, what are you going to do today?" Mrs. Weasley asked at breakfast one day.

"Well, we thought of going to Diagon Alley and getting ready for school, mum," Ron replied.

"Very well..." she said, "Oh, and Harry, did they make you a prefect yet?" she added quickly.

"Er... both 'yes' and 'no'," Harry said, "'yes' for yes, they did, 'no' for I refused to accept it."

"What? Why did you refuse?" Mrs. Weasley asked, her voice (and her face as well) showing clearly that she was surprised by this.

"Well, I thought that being The Boy Who Lived, being a quidditch player and a prefect would make my life a bit too exciting and overloaded with events one person simply can't handle," Harry replied. He had rehearsed that speech several times already, but not for such an occasion, more like to explain it to Professor McGonagall, face-to-face, if necessary.

"I see..." she said thoughtfully, "Alright, eat up if you want to get to Diagon Alley before they run out of stock when all the other students get there!" she added with a much more cheerful, yet still somewhat let-down voice.

*****

The shopping in Diagon Alley took Harry's mind off of matters that were on it for the past few days, he was now more concerned with not letting Ginny blame what had happened to him on the ring and, therefore, her; but it wasn't an easy task. After getting all the new books, re-filling the potions supply kits and visiting Fortescue's for matters of consuming of ice-creams, Harry and the Weasleys (Ron, Fred & George, Ginny and Mrs. Weasley (who was escorting them)) have returned to the Leaky Cauldron to Floo back to the Burrow.

September the first came quickly this year, even more quickly than before. Maybe, Harry thought, it had to do something with his growing up. His mind trailed once again to what he would be doing after he finishes Hogwarts... Moody advised him to be an Auror (but then again, that was not the real Mad-Eye Moody, could he take a Death Eater's advice?), his own hobbies did not extend beyond Quidditch...

He had to face it, he had exactly no idea of what he'll be doing after school.

"What are you standing and staring at over there?" Ron yelled into his ear, "Wake up, pack up, go to Hogwarts, remember?"

"Oh, right," Harry said sheepishly and joined his friend in packing stuff up once again.

Once they finally were ready, the trunks and owl cages were all hauled out and loaded into the two ministry cars MR. Weasley had managed to get. Since these were magical cars, the trip to King's Cross was rather pleasant, except for the fact that Fred and George had definitely spent their summer not only in playing pranks but inventing some stuff as well, since they were having fun with the effect of feeding a Rat Tart (the rat variation of a Canary Cream) to Pig, as the hyper-active little owl had turned into a hyper-active little rat that was zooming all over its cage in effortless attempts of understanding of just what had happened to it.

Compared to this, their trip through the station and onto Platform 9 ¾ was eventless, but as Harry set off towards the train, Ginny pushing her trolley next to him, he heard a familiar voice from behind.

"Well, well, well, what do we have here! Potter and his girlfriend!"

The voice was unmistakeable, Draco Malfoy, in the flesh. Harry's mind suddenly jumped to his 'dream' about Malfoy's dead parents.

"Sod off Malfoy, I've got no time for this," Harry replied wearily as he turned around.

"Oh really, and why is it so?" Malfoy was accompanied by his two sidekicks, Crabbe and Goyle, who at this point have already started looking very smug, as if they knew what was to come. Malfoy usually did the talk, and when the time came to do real battle, his two thugs came in.

"Because I doubt that you or your parents would like to find you lying somewhere in a hospital with a broken nose, that's why!" Harry voice rose to a point just a teensy bit short to be compared with rolling thunder, though he did not quite understand why was he yelling, and, more importantly, why was he talking so much like Malfoy himself?

"Er... Is that a threat, Potter?" Malfoy said, sounding somewhat taken aback.

"Well, if you want to think so..." Harry replied calmly, wishing he had something large to whack Malfoy on the head with.

"So, are you, Potter, threatening me?" Malfoy's voice rose as well, several people that were just passing by stood and stared at them, while Ron was silently watching the events from a point where he would not be forced to engage in word combat (as it never was his strong point), but should the situation escalate into a combat involving fists and feet, he'd be nearby to save Harry from Malfoy's thugs, or at least take some of the beating off Harry and onto himself.

"No, Malfoy, I am telling you to sod off!" Harry had raised his hands, getting ready for a fight.

"Oh really!" Malfoy said again, "Are going to make me?"

"Yes!" Harry replied, making a single but well-aimed swing with his hand...

...When the pain in his fist became bearable he looked at Malfoy who was lying on the ground, his nose bleeding like if it was broken, which (judging by Malfoy's wailing) it probably was.

"And don't you dare to say I didn't warn you!" Harry added triumphantly as he turned on his heels and left to board the train.